A method for a wireless communication includes receiving or storing a peak to average (PAR) back off value; and applying the PAR back off value to determine the transmission power and rate for SIMO and MIMO transmissions. In one aspect, the PAR back off value is at least partially based on modulation type. In another aspect, the PAR back off value is more for higher order QAM than for QPSK. The power allocation algorithm for different UL MIMO schemes is described as follows. For MIMO without antenna permutation (e.g. per antenna rate control), different PAR back off values are considered for different data streams. For MIMO with antenna permutation or other unitary transformation such as virtual antenna mapping or precoding, the PAR back off are determined based on combined channel. The transmission data rate depends on power and also the receiver algorithms such as a MMSE receiver or MMSE-SIC receiver.