Patent ID: 7590182

Claim:
A receiver unit in a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communication system, comprising: at least one front end processor configured to receive at least one signal received via different spatial channels; a MIMO processor coupled to the at least one front end processor and configured to provide estimates of at least some symbols in the at least one signal; and a channel quality estimator coupled to the MIMO processor and configured to estimate characteristics of a plurality of transmission channels used for data transmission and to provide signal-to-noise and interference (SNR) information for one or more of the different spatial channels, wherein the channel quality estimator is configured to provide the SNR information for each subcarrier of an Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexed (OFDM) signal received at the receiver based upon an average of SNR information over all of the different spatial channels; and a transmit data processor configured to receive and process the SNR information transmission.