Patent ID: 8737931

Claim:
A system, comprising: N antennas for connecting to at least R receiver chains and a transmitter chain, which is a dedicated transmitter chain different and separate from the receiver chains, R being less than N; a switch adapted to couple each of said receiver chains to a selected individual antenna so that each individual receiver chain is coupled to a different one of said antennas, said switch comprising: a first sub-switch adapted to couple a first antenna selected from (N-T) antennas, T being less than R, to (R-T) receiver chains, a second sub-switch adapted to be coupled to N antennas, and a third sub-switch operationally coupled in series with the second sub-switch to couple T antennas selected from N antennas to T receiver chains during reception and one antenna selected from N antennas to the transmitter chain during transmission; and a processor configured to adjust a transmit data rate of a signal transmitted by the transmitter chain to compensate for a lack of use of diversity combining at a transceiver communicatively coupled with the system, based at least on a number of antennas of the transceiver.