Patent ID: 6968022

Claim:
An apparatus for performing beamforming on a plurality of signals in a reception channel received from a receiving antenna array, said signals including simultaneous data signals from a plurality of transmitters, said circuit comprising: an N×1 switched beam beamforming circuit for weighting and combining outputs of N antenna receiving elements to generate a plurality of beam signals and selecting for output a single beam signal therefrom based on a beam scheduling sequence, wherein N is an integer greater than 1; a beam schedule generating circuit for generating said beam scheduling sequence used by said N×1 switched beam beamforming circuit for switching between ones of said plurality of beam signals for output; a frequency downconverting circuit for converting the selected single beam signal to a baseband signal; and a multi-path/multi-user estimation circuit for generating from said baseband signal path estimates and path estimate errors for each of said simultaneous data signals.