Patent ID: 8098212

Claim:
A method comprising: in a wireless communication system, grouping two or more antennas from a plurality of antennas at a wireless device into a first set of partitions; grouping two or more antennas from the plurality of antennas into a second set of partitions; assigning a first set of subcarriers to the first set of partitions according a transmission scheme that subdivides the transmit frequency band into subcarriers; assigning a second set of subcarriers to the second set of partitions according the transmission scheme; wherein the first and second sets of subcarriers are assigned according to orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) or orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) techniques; performing beamforming using the first set of subcarriers and space-time coding to transmit wireless signals via the antennas grouped into the first set of partitions for a first time period; performing beamforming using the second set of subcarriers and space-time coding to transmit wireless signals via the antennas grouped into the second set of partitions for a second time period; and setting the first time period and the second time period to correspond to a multiple of a duration of a symbol transmission time period of the wireless signals, wherein the first and second time periods have different durations; and wherein grouping the two or more antennas into the first set of partitions and into the second set of partitions is repeated so as to hop between the first and second sets of partitions of antennas during subsequent time periods for transmitting wireless signals.