WEIGHT GENERATION METHOD FOR MULTI-ANTENNA COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS UTILIZING RF-BASED AND BASEBAND SIGNAL WEIGHTING AND COMBINING BASED UPON MINIMUM BIT ERROR RATE

摘要

A signal weighting and combining method implemented within a receiver (520) having a plurality of receive antennas (560) is disclosed herein. Each receive antenna is disposed to produce a received RF signal in response to a transmitted RF signal received through a channel (550). The method includes weighting (534) the plurality of received RF signals produced by the antennas in accordance with a corresponding plurality of RF weighting values selected to minimize an output bit error rate of the receiver, thereby forming a plurality of weighted RF signals. The method further includes combining ones of the plurality of weighted RF signals in order to form one or more combined RF signals. A similar splitting and weighting method capable of being implemented within a transmitter (510) having a plurality of transmit antennas (522) is also disclosed.