Techniques herein support enhanced multi-rate encoding and decoding of signals in multiple formats. In one embodiment, input data is received at a first device at one of a plurality of data rates. Encoder units are activated to produce streams of encoded input data. The encoder units are configured to operate at the same data rate. Differential encoding operations are performed to produce an encoded output stream. The encoded output stream is modulated for transmission to a second device. In another embodiment, a first device receives an encoded data stream that is transmitted from a second device. The modulated data stream includes encoded data at one of a plurality of data rates. Differential decoding is performed on the encoded data by activating one or more of a plurality of decoder units, where each of the plurality of decoder units is configured to operate at the same rate.