Message reliability is a key requirement of 5G/6G communications. In many challenging network environments, two successive retransmissions of a message can both be corrupted, greatly reducing reliability. Therefore, methods are disclosed for identifying faulted message elements according to a metric that includes the waveform or SNR of the message element, its modulation quality, and a consistency check between the received versions. The receiver can then assemble a merged message version by selecting the higher quality version of each message element from the two (or more) corrupted versions, and thereby avoid requesting yet another retransmission. In addition, the receiver can monitor the background level and, if it is above a predetermined limit, can request that the receiver store the message for a predetermined time, or until the background level subsides below the limit.