A wireless communication device may reduce a receive sensitivity in the face of a high number of interfering communications to improve uplink throughput. In a listen-before-talk scenario, a device detecting a large number of undesired received communications may not transmit uplink data in the face of crowded traffic conditions. To avoid this scenario, if a desired communication link has a sufficiently high RSSI, a device may reduce its receive sensitivity to reduce the number of detected undesired communications while maintaining sufficient quality of the desired communication link. This approach will increase uplink throughput and improve communication performance.