Patent ID: 8913515

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving, at a plurality of stations, at least one multi-user sounding packet from an access point; determining a sum of desired signal strengths from the at least one received multi-user sounding packet by each of the plurality of stations; determining a sum of interference signal strengths from the at least one received multi-user sounding packet by each of the plurality of stations; and generating multi-user multiple-input and multiple-output link quality metrics based on a ratio of the sum of desired signal strengths to the sum of interference signal strengths, wherein the generating of the link quality metrics is based on the following equation: MLQ k , i ⁡ ( n ) = 10 ⁢ ⁢ log 10 ⁡ ( ∑ p ∈ STS ⁡ ( i ) ⁢  S ^ k , i ⁡ ( n , p )  2 ∑ p ∉ STS ⁡ ( i ) ⁢  S ^ k , i ⁡ ( n , p )  2 ) wherein MLQ k,i is a multi-user (MU) multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) link quality for a subcarrier k, N STS,i is a number of receiver antennas, and wherein Ŝ is a signal strength.