A MIMO communication system implements an interleaver design with multiple encoders for more than two transmit antennas for high throughput WLAN communication systems. Multiple encoders are utilized in the transmitter and multiple decoders are utilized in the receiver, wherein each encoder operates at lower clock speed than would be necessary with a single encoder. In conjunction with using multiple encoders, a modified interleaving function for each spatial stream processing allows fully exploring the diversity gains. The provided interleaving function is suitable for transmitter architectures with multiple encoders. Similarly, a modified de-interleaving function is provided that is suitable for receiver architectures with multiple decoders.