An apparatus includes a baseband signal processing block, processing circuitry, and at least one radio frequency (RF) communication module communicably coupled to the baseband signal processing block and configured to communicate using a selected mode of communication in a channel. The processing circuitry is configured to detect a sub-channel band of unavailable spectrum within the channel, the band of unavailable spectrum being less than a whole of the channel. The channel includes one contiguous band of frequencies divisible into at least two non-overlapping non-adjacent sub-channels. The processing circuitry is configured to select one mode of communication selected from a plurality of modes including: a carrier aggregation (CA) only mode, a multiple input multiple output (MIMO) only mode, and a carrier aggregation multiple input multiple output (CA-MIMO) hybrid mode.