Patent ID: 8787343

Claim:
A first apparatus for determining a preferred transmit antenna pattern for wireless communications, comprising: a processing system configured to assign a plurality of combinations of coefficients to one or more transmit antennas of the first apparatus for transmission in a plurality of iterations, wherein a number of nonzero coefficients in each combination is adjusted in each iteration; a transmitter configured to transmit, for each iteration, a plurality of reference signals to a second apparatus, wherein each reference signal is transmitted using one of the plurality of combinations of coefficients; and a receiver configured to receive a message from the second apparatus, wherein the message comprises an indication of a preferred combination of coefficients for the one or more transmit antennas of the first apparatus, wherein the preferred combination of coefficients is determined based on a quality of at least one of a plurality of received reference signals at the second apparatus; wherein the processing system is further configured to determine a selected transmit antenna pattern utilizing at least the preferred combination of coefficients.