Patent ID: 7796696

Claim:
A method of communicating data to a receiver having M receiving antennas from a transmitter having N transmitting antennas, where M and N are integers, the method comprising: sending a message to determine a number of transmit paths to be used, wherein the message is sent using a first one of a plurality of space/time code rates based at least on a number of available transmit paths in the transmitter; awaiting an acknowledgement message comprising a number of receiver paths; setting the number of transmit paths and a second one of a plurality of space/time code rates based on at least the acknowledgement message; producing data streams from outbound data based on the number of transmit paths; applying the data streams to a space/time encoder to produce encoded signals; and transmitting the encoded signals from at least a portion of N transmitting antennas, wherein M and N are unequal.