A system, method, and apparatus are provided for a source to choose a partner/relay from at least one candidate to transmit at least part of a message from the source to destination. The choice depends on the channel conditions of the source and when the source is experiencing poor channel quality to the destination, the source selects the candidate and the modulation modes of the source and partner/relay such that the frame error rate (FER) of the source is lowered. Otherwise, a modulation mode is selected for each of the source and the partner/relay that most improves the gain in throughput of the source. The present invention applies to modes consisting of binary phase shift keying (BPSK), quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK), and 16-state quadrature amplitude modulation (16-QAM).