Patent ID: 7818013

Claim:
A method comprising: collecting, by a transmitter station, information associated with one or more uplink channels of a multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) system employed to communicate with at least one receiver station, wherein the collecting information comprises collecting channel quality for spatial channels and/or data streams; computing channel quality information for a number of downlink channels based at least in part on the information associated with the one or more uplink channels, wherein the computing channel quality information based on the information associated with the one or more uplink channels comprises calculating at least one of a mean and/or a variance of channel quality for each of said spatial channels and/or data streams, and wherein the computing channel quality information further comprises estimating a usable number of channels; determining one or more downlink channel parameters for use by the transmitter station to transmit signals to the at least one receiver station, via the one or more of the downlink channels, based at least in part on the computing channel quality information; and receiving by the transmitter station, from the at least one receiver station, feedback information only for a subset of relatively stronger channels of the estimated usable channels.