Method and apparatus for multiuser MIMO beamforming training

A central network controller for beamforming training, comprising:

• a non-transitory computer readable medium storing instructions;
• and
• a processor which upon execution of said instructions performs the following:
• signaling a plurality of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) values with each of the SNR values associated with one of a plurality of antenna identifiers (IDs) in a first frame identifying different radio frequency (RF) chains for a process of beamforming training, the RF chains being connected to multiple physical antenna elements with multiple antenna sectors, wherein each of the multiple antenna sectors is identified with a sector ID;
• receiving and transmitting the first frame bi-directionally between multiple pairs of communicating nodes, wherein each pair of the communicating nodes has at least one initiator node and one responder node;
• receiving a feedback of the SNR values associated with the antenna IDs from two or more responder nodes of the multiple pairs of the communicating nodes to choose an RF chain as a transmit antenna for transmission;
• determining respective one from the multiple antenna sectors of the multiple physical antenna elements for transmission for the responder nodes according to the feedback;
• selecting a number of antennas as transmit antennas for the responder nodes;
• signaling the first frame from the number of antennas respectively;
• and
• transmitting the first frame a number of times equal to a maximum number of the selected transmit antennas.