In this paper, a wireless communication system is presented and investigated which is based on a joint design of layers and a comprehensive information exchange between them. For the example of a flexible physical layer - based on the OFDM transmission technique - and an intelligent data link layer, it is shown how a joint design and a more detailed exchange of data can be applied advantageously to fully exploit the potential of both layers. The system performance is increased by adapting to both the quality of the radio links as well as to the Quality of Service (QoS) requirements of the transmitted packets.