Patent ID: 9325397
Filing Date: 2016-04-26
CPC Classification: H04B,H04L

Claim Text:
1. A method of operating a wireless network node, the method including: transmitting a first multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) downlink communication to a wireless terminal according to a first MIMO rank, wherein the first MIMO rank defines a number of parallel MIMO transmission streams transmitted to the wireless terminal during the first MIMO downlink communication; receiving a report from the wireless terminal identifying a reported MIMO rank, wherein the reported MIMO rank defines a recommendation for a number of parallel MIMO transmission streams to be transmitted to the wireless terminal during a second MIMO downlink communication; receiving at least one Hybrid Automatic Repeat Request (HARQ) acknowledge/non-acknowledge (ACK/NACK) message from the wireless terminal corresponding to the first MIMO downlink communication; selecting a second MIMO rank for the second MIMO downlink communication responsive to the at least one HARQ ACK/NACK message, wherein the second MIMO rank defines a number of parallel MIMO transmission streams to be transmitted to the wireless terminal during the second MIMO downlink communication, wherein selecting the second MIMO rank comprises selecting the second MIMO rank to be different than the reported MIMO rank responsive to at least one of the HARQ ACK/NACK messages; and transmitting the second MIMO downlink communication to the wireless terminal according to the second MIMO rank.