Patent ID: 8040986

Claim:
A multiple-antenna wireless device that communicates with a single-antenna enabled device across a spectrum having a plurality of sub-channels, said multiple-antenna wireless device comprising: a plurality of antennas through which the multiple-antenna wireless device communicates with the single-antenna enabled device wireless device, each antenna of the plurality of antennas communicates with the single-antenna enabled device wireless device via an associated communication pathway between a subset of the plurality of antennas on the multiple-antenna wireless device and an antenna on the single-antenna enabled device; sub-channel power analysis logic coupled to the plurality of antennas and adapted to determine a communication quality for at least two communication pathways and determine which communication pathway has a highest communication quality on a sub-channel by sub-channel basis; and diversity selection logic coupled to the sub-channel power analysis logic and adapted to determine an antenna chain weighting vector for an associated antenna chain based on the highest communication quality, wherein the antenna chain weighting vector specifies a relative transmission power for each sub-channel for the associated antenna chain, wherein the antenna chain weighting vector for the associated antenna comprises a plurality of bits, each bit corresponding to one sub-channel, and each bit indicating whether the associated antenna is used to transmit on the corresponding sub-channel.