Presented herein are techniques to ensure power emitted by APs during a cooperative MIMO transmission is within certain limits. For a transmission to be made from two or more wireless access points using cooperative multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) techniques, a measure of separation is determined between the two or more access points. Precoding of signals to be transmitted by the two or more access points is adjusted so as to derate the signals to be transmitted or disable the cooperative nature of the transmission from the two or more access point depending on the measure of separation so that a combined output power from the two or more access points is within a limit.