A system for providing power back-off includes a channel monitor to measure channel conditions associated with a communication channel between a receiver and a transmitter operating at multiple carrier frequencies. A system monitor retrieves one or more system characteristics associated with the receiver and the transmitter. A mapping module maps measured values of the channel conditions to a number of time slots. A power back off (PBO) module determines a value for an optimal PBO for each time slot based on the measured values of the channel conditions for that time slot and the system characteristics. The communication channel includes a cyclo-stationary channel, and the time slots correspond to a time period of the cyclo-stationary channel.