Composite sounding for MIMO beamforming in a wireless home network

A wireless access point (WAP) apparatus having a plurality of antennas and supporting multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wireless communications with associated station nodes on a selected one of a plurality of orthogonal frequency division multiplexed (OFDM) communication channels each including a plurality of tones;

• and the wireless access point apparatus comprising:
• a sounding mode module configured to determine whether a number of communication streams supported by the WAP matches the number of communication streams contained in a sounding response from at least one targeted station node among the associated station nodes, and initiating either a single sounding or a composite set of an integer “N” soundings of the communication channel between the WAP and the at least one targeted station node based on an affirmative and a negative match determination respectively;
• a sounding matrix generator configured to generate “N” linearly independent (LI) spatial mapping matrices (SMM) each associated with a corresponding one of the soundings in the composite set of soundings from the WAP, together with at least one reference SMM for spatially mapping at least one reference tone across all of the soundings in the composite set of soundings, responsive to a negative match determination by the sounding mode module;
• a sounding aggregator configured to aggregate a plurality of partial sounding feedback matrices received from the at least one targeted station node in response to the composite soundings generated by the sounding matrix generator;
• a gain normalizer to normalize the partial sounding feedback matrices aggregated by the sounding aggregator utilizing the reference SMM;
• and
• a beamforming expansion module configured to expand the plurality of normalized partial sounding feedback matrices normalized by the gain normalizer into a full beamforming matrix for spatially mapping downlink communications between the WAP and the at least one targeted station node;
• thereby enhancing the communication capabilities of the WAP.