Communication circuitry uses a combination of Pseudo-Noise (PN) coded and non-PN coded transmission periods to represent different data values. In one embodiment, a number of data values are encoded into a smaller second number of encoded ternary values. The Pseudo-Noise (PN) codes are transmitted representing some of the encoded ternary values and no transmitted PN codes represent other encoded ternary values. The throughput of spread spectrum radio systems is increased by representing data values in fewer spread spectrum time slots.