In a wireless communication system using multiple antennas at the transmitter and multiple antennas at the receiver, with a sufficiently large number of antennas and/or diversity order, the same performance that is obtainable when employing instantaneous rate indication feedback can be attained without any such short-term feedback by adjusting the data rate of each transmit antenna according to a prescribed function. The prescribed function does not depend on the short-term state of the channel, but instead only depends on its long-term statistics, which may be fed back from the receiver to the transmitter at relatively lengthy intervals.