Patent ID: 7298805

Claim:
A method of receiving data in a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communication system, comprising: obtaining, from a plurality of receive antennas at a receiving entity, a plurality of received symbol streams for a plurality of data symbol streams sent by a plurality of transmitting entities, one data symbol stream for each transmitting entity, wherein the data symbol stream for each transmitting entity is spatially processed with a steering vector for the transmitting entity and sent from a plurality of transmit antennas at the transmitting entity; and processing the plurality of received symbol streams in accordance with a receiver spatial processing technique to obtain a plurality of recovered data symbol streams, which are estimates of the plurality of data symbol streams, wherein the steering vector for each transmitting entity is derived by: decomposing a channel response matrix for the transmitting entity to obtain a plurality of eigenvectors and a plurality of singular values, and forming the steering vector for the transmitting entity based on an eigenvector corresponding to a largest singular value among the plurality of singular values.