A MIMO communication system is adapted to encode multiple data streams at the same adaptable rate. Accordingly, the set of all possible modulation/rate combinations to all modulations with common rates is decreased thus resulting in the reduction of the number of possible packet formats carrying the data streams. Rate prediction is made more error-resilient, in part, due to the averaging over all information rates. Furthermore, the signaling overhead of the packets is reduced. Therefore, the tradeoff between the desired transmission rate granularity on the one hand, and robustness/signaling overhead on the other hand, is controlled by adjusting the coding rate.