Patent ID: 7145971

Claim:
A first wireless station for receiving via a multiple input multiple output (MIMO) channel, the station comprising: a plurality of receive antenna paths, each including a receive antenna coupled to a respective radio frequency (RF) and demodulation unit, each path for receiving wireless signals from the MIMO channel via the path's respective receive antenna; and a receive processor coupled to the outputs of the receive antenna paths, the receive processor's processing including a plurality of parallel applications of time-to-subcarrier transforming to convert respective time signals to respective sets of subcarriers, the receive processor's processing further including receive spatio-temporal processing including weighting according to a set of receive weights, and de-interleaving and decoding according to a known interleaving and coding method, wherein the receive processor includes: a plurality of receive time-to-subcarrier transformers coupled to the outputs of respective receive antenna paths to convert respective signals received via the respective receive antenna paths to respective sets of received subcarriers; and a receive spatio-temporal processor to accept the sets of received subcarriers and to carry out the receive spatio-temporal processing on the received subcarriers to produce one or more receive outputs, the receive spatio-temporal processor including a channel estimator to determine for each receive subcarrier the channels characterizing communication via the inputs of the MIMO channel at the remote transmitting station and via the outputs of the MIMO channel coupled to the receive antenna paths of the first wireless station, the processing by the receive spatio-temporal processor including determining of the receive weights, wherein the receive weights are determined according to singular value decompositions of matrices, each matrix corresponding to a subcarrier of the set of subcarriers, wherein for a particular receive subcarrier, the corresponding matrix characterizes communication via the inputs to the MIMO channel at the remote transmitting station and via the outputs of the MIMO channel coupled to the receive antenna paths of the first wireless stations, wherein the receive spatio-temporal processing of the receive spatio-temporal processor provides one or more receive spatial channels of the MIMO channel between a remote station transmitting into the MIMO channel and the first wireless station, such that receive subchannels between the transmitting remote station and the first station are produced, each receive subchannel defined by a subcarrier and a receive spatial channel, and such that at least one of the receive subcarriers is associated with at least two receive spatial channels to define at least two corresponding receive subchannels for each of the at least one receive subcarriers.