A communication device determines an estimate of a communication channel, and determines, based on the estimate of the communication channel, a plurality of pairs of modulation schemes and encoding schemes to be used for a packet, including: i) determining, for a first set of adjacent orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) subcarriers, a first pair of a modulation scheme and an encoding scheme; and ii) determining, for a second set of adjacent OFDM subcarriers, a second pair of a modulation scheme and an encoding scheme, the second pair being different than the first pair. The communication device generates the packet for transmission, wherein i) all data modulated on the first set of adjacent OFDM subcarriers is modulated and encoded using the first pair, and ii) all data modulated on the second set of adjacent OFDM subcarriers is modulated and encoded using the second pair.