Method and apparatus for utilizing channel state information in a wireless communication system

The method of claim 24, wherein the UMMSE processing includes

• processing the received signals to derive received modulation symbols;
• multiplying the received modulation symbols with a first matrix M to provide estimates of transmitted modulation symbols;
• and
• estimating characteristics of a plurality of transmission channels used for the data transmission based on the received modulation symbol, and wherein the first matrix M is selected to minimize a mean square error between the modulation symbol estimates and transmitted modulation symbols.

A multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communication system, comprising:

• a receiver unit comprising
• a plurality of front-end processors configured to receive a plurality of signals via a plurality of receive antennas and to process the received signals to provide received modulation symbols,
• at least one receive MIMO processor coupled to the front-end processors and configured to receive and process the received modulation symbols to derive channel state information (CSI) indicative of characteristics of a plurality of transmission channels used for data transmission, and
• a transmit data processor operatively coupled to the receive MIMO processor and configured to process the CSI for transmission back to the transmitter unit;
• and
• a transmitter unit comprising at least one demodulator configured to receive and process one or more signals from the receiver unit to recover the transmitted CSI, and
• a transmit data processor configured to process data for transmission to the receiver unit based on the recovered CSI, wherein the derived CSI comprises signal-to-noise-plus-interference (SNR) estimates for each of the plurality of transmission channels, the processing at the transmitter unit includes coding data for each transmission channel based on the SNR estimate for the transmission channel, and the data for each transmission channel is independently coded based on the SNR estimate for the transmission channel where the coding includes coding the data for the transmission channel with a fixed base code, and adjusting puncturing of coded bits is based on the SNR estimate for the transmission channel.

A receiver unit in a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communication system, comprising:

• a plurality of front-end processors configured to receive a plurality of transmitted signals via a plurality of receive antennas and to process the received signals to provide received modulation symbols;
• a filter operatively coupled to the plurality of front-end processors and configured to filter the received modulation symbols in accordance with a first matrix to provide filtered modulation symbols, wherein the first matrix is representative of an estimate of channel characteristics between a plurality of transmit antennas and the plurality of receive antennas used for the data transmission;
• a multiplier coupled to the filter and configured to multiply the filtered modulation symbols with a second matrix to provide estimates of transmitted modulation symbols;
• a channel quality estimator coupled to the multiplier and configured to estimate characteristics of a plurality of transmission channels used for the data transmission and provide channel state information (CSI) indicative of the estimated channel characteristics;
• and
• a transmit data processor configured to receive and process the CSI for transmission from the receiver unit.