Patent ID: 8725102

Claim:
A method for selecting a desired number of receive antennas from a set of receive antennas, the method comprising: determining, by a processor, a signal-to-interference and noise power ratio of the set of receive antennas; determining, by the processor, a plurality of correlations between different rows of a channel matrix associated with the set of receive antennas, wherein each row of the channel matrix corresponds to a receive antenna of the set of receive antennas and wherein the determining the plurality of correlations comprises determining an absolute value of an inner product of the different rows of the channel matrix; identifying, by the processor, a pair of receive antennas having a greatest correlation of the plurality of correlations from the set of receive antennas based on the signal-to-interference and noise power ratio; eliminating, by the processor, one receive antenna of the pair of receive antennas having the greatest correlation, wherein the eliminating one receive antenna of the pair of receive antennas is based on a capacity of the set of receive antennas and the signal-to-interference and noise power ratio of the set of receive antennas; and repeating the identifying a pair of receive antennas and the eliminating one receive antenna of the pair of receive antennas in response to determining that a number of receive antennas remaining in the set of receive antennas is greater than the desired number of receive antennas.