Patent ID: 8190102

Claim:
A wireless transceiver comprising: a programmable antenna, that transmits an outbound radio frequency (RF) signal containing outbound data to a remote transceiver and that receives an inbound RF signal containing inbound data from the remote transceiver, wherein the programmable antenna is configurable based on a control signal; at least one RF transceiver section, coupled to the programmable antenna, that generates the outbound RF signal based on the outbound data and that generates the inbound data based on the inbound RF signal; and an antenna configuration controller, coupled to the programmable antenna, that generates the control signal to configure the programmable antenna via a configuration procedure that includes: evaluating a first plurality of candidate antenna configurations, based on quality data corresponding to each of the first plurality of candidate antenna configurations, wherein the first plurality of antenna configurations utilize a plurality of antenna polarizations; identifying at least one selected antenna configuration from the first plurality of candidate antenna configurations, when the quality data corresponding to the at least one selected antenna configuration compares favorably to a quality threshold; selecting a first proper subset of the first plurality of candidate antenna configurations when the quality data corresponding to the first plurality of candidate antenna configurations compares unfavorably to the quality threshold; generating a second plurality of candidate antenna configurations, based on the first proper subset of the first plurality of candidate antenna configurations; evaluating the second plurality of candidate antenna configurations, based on the quality data corresponding to each of the second plurality of candidate antenna configurations; and identifying the at least one selected antenna configuration from the second plurality of candidate antenna configurations, when the quality data corresponding to the at least one selected antenna configuration compares favorably to the quality threshold.