A base station is capable of unifying a single-user MIMO scheme with a multi-user MIMO scheme by receiving a Rank-1 CQI values from one or more subscriber stations. The base station also receives preceding vectors from the subscriber stations, and then determines which of the subscriber stations has a best Rank-1 CQI value. The base station then determines a beam forming matrix to use based at least in part on the vectors received from the subscriber station having the best Rank-1 CQI value. The base station then broadcasts data to the subscriber station using the beam forming matrix corresponding to the subscriber station having the best Rank-1 channel quality indicator to implement single-user MIMO in one or multiple streams to that subscriber station, or to the subscriber stations having the best Rank-2 channel quality indicators to implement multi-user MIMO in multiple streams.