Patent ID: 8792838

Claim:
A radio communication apparatus including an antenna set including a plurality of antennas and executing spatial-multiplexing based communication, comprising: an antenna selection unit that selects from the antennas a combination of antennas whose quantity is equal to or less than a quantity of counterpart antennas to be communicated, as a combination of antennas to be used in spatial-multiplexing based communication; a signal processing unit that executes signal processing for communication using the combination of antennas selected by the antenna selection unit; an antenna configuration specifying unit that specifies a physical configuration of the plurality of antennas; and a communication environment change detecting unit that detects a time-dependent change in a predetermined amount of variation in communication environment of the radio communication apparatus, wherein the antenna selection unit selects the combination of antennas to be used based on the configuration specified by the antenna configuration specifying unit, and varies a period of changing a combination of antennas to be selected, depending on whether the time-dependent change in the amount of variation detected by the communication environment change detecting unit is equal to or less than a predetermined reference value.