Systems and methodologies are described herein that facilitate improved modulation and coding techniques for a multiple-in multiple-out (MIMO) communication system. As described herein, data to be transmitted over a set of physical layers (e.g., corresponding to antennas, beams, etc.) can be processed such that encoding is performed on a per-codeword basis and modulation is performed on a per-layer basis, thereby mitigating performance degradation experienced by traditional systems due to layer imbalance. As further described herein, per-codeword code rate parameters and per-layer modulation parameters can be signaled to a device in various manners, such as through modulation and coding scheme (MCS) signaling, explicit code rate and/or modulation scheme signaling, relative code rate and/or modulation scheme signaling, or the like.