A method of transmitting or retransmitting a packet in a communication system. The method includes determining a modulation and coding scheme (MCS) to reduce the packet error rate (PER) for transmission, where the MCS is an aggregate of M redundant packet transmissions as a function of at least one of determined past channel conditions and/or allocated resources, determinable current channel conditions and/or allocated resources, future statistical channel conditions and/or allocated resources, and/or a cost function; and transmitting the packets in the communication system according to the MCS.