Patent ID: 8625701

Claim:
A method, comprising: receiving, at a first communication device, channel sounding information during an antenna selection training procedure, wherein (i) the first communication device has a number, N R , of receiving chains, and (ii) the channel sounding information either (a) was transmitted using different subsets of a set of transmission antennas of a second communication device, or (b) is received using different subsets of a set of receiving antennas of the first communication device; performing, at the first communication device, antenna selection computations that (i) use the channel sounding information received during the antenna selection training procedure, (ii) assume that the second communication device uses a first N ss columns of a full-dimensional spatial spreading matrix to transmit the channel sounding information during the antenna selection training procedure, and (iii) accounts for the use, by the second communication device, of the first N ss columns of the full-dimensional spatial spreading matrix when transmitting N ss spatial streams; and one of (i) (a) generating, at the first communication device, antenna selection feedback using the antenna selection computations, and (b) transmitting, from the first communication device to the second communication device, the antenna selection feedback, or (ii) selecting, at the first communication device, a subset of the set of receiving antennas of the first communication device using the antenna selection computations, wherein the full-dimensional channel spatial spreading matrix has components associated with i) a row dimension having a number of rows equal to a number, N T , of transmission chains to be used by the second communication device to transmit spatial data streams, and ii) a column dimension having a number of columns equal to N T , wherein N R , N ss and N T are positive integers, and wherein N ss is less than both N T and N R .