US Patent 8170617 Extensions to adaptive beam-steering method

A radio frequency (RF) transmitter is coupled to and controlled by a processor to transmit data. A physical layer circuit is coupled to the RF transmitter to encode and decode between a digital signal and a modulated analog signal. The physical layer circuit comprises a high rate physical layer circuit (HRP) and a low rate physical layer circuit (LRP). In a first embodiment, the LRP circuit generates a LRP packet comprising an LRP transmit power control feedback. In a second embodiment, the LRP and HRP circuit generate a packet comprising a beam-forming phase and magnitude feedback information. In a third embodiment, the LRP and HRP circuit supports up to 64 independent transmit antenna elements.