Wireless transmission suffers from poor wireless channel conditions, such as high bit error rate and error bursts resulting from channel fading and radio interference. The MAC-level Forward Error Correction (MFEC) mechanism is proposed to solve these problems. The MFEC mechanism cannot only adaptively adjust Forward Error Correction (FEC) redundancy, depending on the network condition, but can also retransmit whole packets even if the error packet includes several bit errors. In this paper, an Adaptive MAC-level FEC (AMFEC) mechanism is proposed to improve wireless transmission quality. The AMFEC mechanism relies on the effective packet loss rate model to dynamically adjust MFEC redundancy in order to minimize error recovery overhead. The AMFEC mechanism will retransmit the error of sub-packets and increase FEC redundancy to reduce transmission redundancy. The AMFEC mechanism not only enhances the quality of wireless transmission but also reduces the overhead of retransmission. The experimental results show the AMFEC mechanism is better than conventional MFEC mechanisms. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd.