Patent ID: 8243706

Claim:
A method for supporting transmission of data in a multi-input-multi-output (MIMO) communication system to one or more terminals, the method comprising: assigning a first plurality of sets of Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) sub-carriers to a corresponding plurality of antennas, the first plurality of sets comprising distinct sub-sets of the sub-carriers; transmitting a preamble portion of a first frame from the antennas to the one or more terminals over a downlink channel, the downlink channel comprising at least the OFDM sub-carriers; receiving, from at least one of the terminals, a first frequency response of the downlink channel with respect to the antennas as feedback information; assigning, for one or more terminals from which feedback information was received, a second set of the OFDM sub-carriers to a subset of the antennas based on the feedback information; transmitting a data portion of the first frame from the assigned subset of the antennas to one or more of the terminals; assigning a second plurality of sets of the OFDM sub-carriers to the plurality of antennas, the second plurality of sets comprising the distinct sub-sets of sub-carriers such that the assignment of sub-sets of the sub-carriers to the plurality of antennas for the second plurality of sets is different than the assignment for the first plurality of sets; transmitting a preamble portion of a second frame from the antennas to the one or more terminals; and receiving, from at least one of the terminals, a second frequency response of the downlink channel with respect to the antennas.