Patent ID: 8335167

Claim:
A method for beamforming in a communication system, the method comprising: generating a first plurality of training signals to be transmitted via a plurality of antennas over a communication channel, including applying a different one of a plurality of antenna weight vectors (AWVs) to each of the plurality of training signals; receiving feedback generated using the first plurality of training signals, wherein the feedback includes at least one of: (i) a transmitter AWV for use with the plurality of antennas, and (ii) channel state information (CSI) descriptive of the communication channel; and generating a second plurality of training signals to be transmitted using a single AWV, wherein generating the second plurality of training signals is associated with a certain iteration of a beam refinement procedure, wherein the single AWV is generated during a beamforming procedure performed prior to the certain iteration of the beam refinement procedure, and wherein the beamforming procedure is one of (i) a sector sweeping procedure or (ii) a previous iteration of the beam refinement procedure.