Digital communications systems can adapt the transmit data rates based on channel state. We call this 'link adaptation' or 'adaptive modulation and coding (AMC)'. For example, if the communication channel is experiencing severe fading, the transmission can be done with robust modulation, e.g., BPSK that offers protection to data in poor channel state in terms of bit error rate; and a channel coding scheme with a low coding rate, i.e., many redundant bits in order to protect the information bits. If the channel state is good, the transmission can be done with 16 QAM and high coding rate that can transmit more bits.
Lookup table is a table that shows the signal to noise ratio (SNRs) ranges in which each modulation and coding scheme (MCS) can be used. There are many types of link adaptation. The lookup table depends on the kind of system you are considering. What is the system?