Systems and methods relating to decoding a downlink channel that utilizes repetitions and, in particular, decoding the downlink channel when the number of repetitions utilized for transmission of the downlink channel is unknown. In some embodiments, a method of operation of a User Equipment device (UE) in a cellular communications network comprises identifying a Signal to Interference plus Noise (SINR) value for a signal received by the UE from a radio access node of the cellular communications network, identifying a number of repetitions estimated to be used for transmission of a downlink channel from the radio access node based on the SINR value, and attempting to decode the downlink channel based on the number of repetitions estimated to be used for transmission of the downlink channel from the radio access node.