A method for operating a user equipment (UE) comprises receiving information about a downlink (DL) transmission transmitted from NRRH>1 RRHs, wherein: NRRH=number of remote radio heads (RRHs), RRH r comprises a group of antenna ports, and r=1, . . . , NRRH; receiving the DL transmission; and decoding the information about the DL transmission; wherein the DL transmission is based on a scheme that is a combination of a precoding scheme and a diversity scheme, wherein the precoding scheme corresponds to applying an intra-RRH precoder component to antenna ports within an RRH, and wherein the diversity scheme corresponds to applying an inter-RRH diversity component to antenna ports across RRHs.