Patent ID: 8478191

Claim:
A multiple-input, multiple-output wireless communications three-hop repeater, the repeater comprising a receiver end and a transmitter end with a wireless link between the receiver end and the transmitter end, the receiver end comprising: at least a first pair of antennas, each configured to receive transmit branch signals transmitted from each transmit branch of a multiple-output wireless communication device; a channel estimator dedicated for each of the transmit branches and connected with each of a number of receiver branch channels, each channel estimator being configured to perform channel estimation on one of the transmit branch signals, the output of each channel estimator for a given transmit branch being used to produce a corrected transmit branch signal associated with a receiver branch channel to produce a corrected transmit branch signal, each corrected transmit branch signal being delayed by a respective time; and a combiner associated with each receiver branch channel, to combine the delayed corrected transmit branch signal with other delayed transmit branch signals from other receiver branch channels that have been corrected by their respective channel estimators for the same transmit branch.