MIMO Transmission in IEEE802.11 WLAN Systems

Abstract

The present invention allows an IEEE802.11 receiver to operate on two alternative physical layers. The first of the two alternative physical layers is the conventional IEEE802.11 physical layer according to a respective specific standard, which is well known in the art and provides communication between a transmitter and a receiver via a SISO OFDM transmission. A second, alternative physical layer that, among other advantages, enables a higher reliability than the conventional IEEE802.11 physical layer, is provided by operating the IEEE802.11 receiver to process a specific type of MIMO transmissions, which as such are foreign to the IEEE802.11 WLAN standards. A MIMO transmission according to the present invention has multiple concurrent transmissions of a single stream of analogue RF data signals, wherein corresponding analogue RF data signals of different ones of the concurrent transmissions of the stream differ only by having different amplitudes or different phases, or both, different amplitudes and phases.