Patent ID: 8369440

Claim:
A communication apparatus comprising: a plurality of transmitting units, each of which is connected to a different antenna and transmits a signal stream via the antenna; a scheduling unit which is configured such that when a number of receiving units capable of simultaneously receiving, the number being included in feedback information received from a receiving apparatus having a plurality of receiving units respectively connected to different antennas, is larger than a number of transmitting units detected from among the plurality of transmitting units as being capable of transmitting, a number of outputs indicating the number of transmitting units to be used to transmit signal streams is set so as not to exceed the number of transmitting units capable of transmitting, and a combination of transmitting units corresponding to the number of outputs, to each of which one of the signal streams is to be input, is defined in the form of a precoding matrix; a codeword generating unit that generates, from data to be transmitted, a predetermined number of codewords to be transmitted out simultaneously; an encoder that encodes the predetermined number of codewords, and generates signal streams corresponding to the number of outputs by splitting the encoded codewords; and a modulation unit that supplies each of the signal streams generated by the encoder to a corresponding one of the transmitting units in accordance with the precoding matrix.