Patent ID: 8199846

Claim:
A forward reference signaling method for a multiple input, multiple output (MIMO) space division multiple access (SDMA) system, comprising: receiving at a transmitting device effective channel information from a plurality of receiving devices by receiving a preferred precoding vector or information representative thereof from each of the plurality of receiving devices; generating a plurality of transmit beamforming vectors based on the effective channel information using a spatial separation scheme which selects the plurality of transmit beamforming vectors from a defined set of transmit beamforming vectors; generating precoded reference signals by using each of the plurality of transmit beamforming vectors to encode a reference signal; and feeding forward the precoded reference signals to the plurality of receiving devices for use in generating receive beamforming vectors at each receiving device, where each receiving device extracts the plurality of transmit beamforming vectors from the precoded reference signals and identifies which transmit beamforming vector of the plurality of transmit beamforming vectors is designed for said receiving device without requiring additional information to be fed forward that identifies the transmit beamforming vector of the plurality of transmit beamforming vectors or precoded reference signal that is designed for said receiving device.