<p>Embodiments of the disclosure provide a transmitter, a receiver and methods of operating a transmitter and a receiver. In one embodiment, the transmitter has at least three transmit antennas and includes a feedback decoding portion (115) configured to recover at least one group-based channel quality indicator provided by a feedback signal from a receiver, wherein each group-based channel quality indicator corresponds to one of a set of transmission layer groupings. The transmitter also includes a modulator portion (108) configured to generate at least one symbol stream and a mapping portion (106) configured to multiplex each symbol stream to at least one transmission layer grouping. The transmitter further includes a precoder portion (107) configured to couple the transmission layers to the transmit antennas for a transmission.</p>
