Patent ID: 7483718

Claim:
In a receiver having one or more RF chains and a first plurality of receive antennas, a method for selecting a subset of the first plurality of receive antennas to receive a transmitted RF signal, the method comprising: establishing a second plurality of possible subsets of the first plurality of receive antennas for each possible coding rate; determining a maximum date rate among the second plurality of possible subsets of the first plurality of receive antennas for each coding rate; selecting the coding rate with the highest maximum data rate; determining a second plurality of output bit error rates of the receiver corresponding to the second plurality of possible subsets of the first plurality of receive antennas for the selected coding rate; identifying a minimum of the second plurality of output bit error rates for the selected coding rate; selecting one of the second plurality of possible subsets of the first plurality of receive antennas corresponding to the minimum of the second plurality of output bit error rates for the selected coding rate; and connecting the one or more RF chains to the receive antennas of the selected one of the second plurality of possible subsets.