Patent ID: 8194760

Claim:
A method for communicating information in a wireless communications system, the method comprising: storing an information-bearing sequence at two or more base stations in a group of base stations; and transmitting data corresponding to the information-bearing sequence from a number of base stations for receipt by a receiver of a user, where the number of base stations is not globally known a priori and indicates a diversity of order, such that the diversity of order M is obtained if a total of M number of antennas spread over multiple base stations transmit the information-bearing sequence, where M is an integer, wherein transmitting the data corresponding to the information-bearing sequence further comprises, at each of the M base station antennas transmitting data corresponding to the information-bearing sequence: pre-processing the information-bearing sequence by producing precoded data using pre-coding that is identical to pre-coding performed on data of the information-bearing sequence by all base stations in the number of base stations transmitting the information-bearing sequence and splitting the precoded data into a plurality of precoded subvectors; encoding the precoded data using a space time block coding scheme common to all base stations in the number of base stations, by applying a base code to each of the plurality of subvectors separately to encode each of the plurality of subvectors and combining blocks of encoded subvectors; and performing base station-specific and antenna-specific post-processing of data generated as a result of encoding the precoded data, wherein performing base station-specific and antenna-specific post-processing of data comprises projecting the data generated as a result of encoding on an individual steering vector that is distinct to each of base station in the number of base stations transmitting the information-bearing sequence wherein pre-processing the information-bearing sequence comprises linearly precoding disjoint sub-blocks of symbol vectors into a set of precoded subvectors and creating sub-blocks from the precoded data, wherein creating sub-blocks comprises re-interleaving elements of the recoded vectors into a new set of vectors.