Beam forming and/or MIMO RF front-end

A method for operating a wireless device having host processing circuitry, baseband processing circuitry communicatively coupled to the host processing circuitry, an up conversion module coupled to the baseband processing circuitry, and a Radio Frequency (RF) front-end coupled to the up conversion module, the method comprising:

• in an RF beamforming transmit mode:
• the baseband processing module converting outbound data into an outbound symbol stream;
• the up conversion module converting the outbound symbol stream into an up-converted signal;
• and
• the RF front-end:
• adjusting the up-converted signal to produce multiple adjusted up-converted signals;
• amplifying the multiple adjusted up-converted signals to produce multiple outbound RF signals;
• and
• transmitting the multiple outbound RF signals as a beamformed RF signal;
• and
• in a multiple input multiple output (MIMO) transmit mode:
• the baseband processing module converting outbound data into a plurality of outbound symbol streams;
• the up conversion module converting the plurality of outbound symbol streams into a plurality of up-converted signals;
• the RF front-end:
• amplifying the plurality of up-converted signals to produce a plurality of outbound RF signals;
• and
• transmitting the plurality of outbound RF signals as a MIMO RF signal.

A wireless device comprising:

• baseband processing circuitry;
• an up conversion module coupled to the baseband processing circuitry;
• and
• a Radio Frequency (RF) front-end coupled to the up conversion module,
• wherein, in an RF beamforming transmit mode:
• the baseband processing module is operable to convert outbound data into an outbound symbol stream;
• the up conversion module is operable to convert the outbound symbol stream into an up-converted signal;
• and
• the RF front-end is operable to adjust the up-converted signal to produce multiple adjusted up-converted signals, to amplify the multiple adjusted up-converted signals to produce multiple outbound RF signals, and to transmit the multiple outbound RF signals as a beamformed RF signal;
• and
• wherein, in a multiple input multiple output (MIMO) transmit mode:
• the baseband processing module is operable to convert outbound data into a plurality of outbound symbol streams;
• the up conversion module is operable to convert the plurality of outbound symbol streams into a plurality of up-converted signals;
• the RF front-end operable to amplify the plurality of up-converted signals to produce a plurality of outbound RF signals and to transmit the plurality of outbound RF signals as a MIMO RF signal.