A wireless local area network (WLAN) transmitter includes a baseband processing module and a plurality of radio frequency (RF) transmitters. The baseband processing module operably coupled to scramble data in accordance with a pseudo random sequence to produce scrambled data. The baseband processing module is further operably coupled to interleave, at a word level, the scrambled data to produce interleaved data when the interleaving is enabled. The baseband processing module is further operably coupled to outer Reed-Solomon encode the scrambled data or the interleaved data to produce outer encoded data when the outer Reed-Solomon encoding is enabled. The baseband processing module is further operably coupled to inner puncture convolution encode the outer encoded data or the scrambled data to produce the encoded data. The baseband processing module is further operably coupled to determine a number of transmit streams based on a mode selection signal. The baseband processing module is further operably coupled to convert the encoded data into streams of symbols in accordance with the number of transmit streams and the mode selection signal. The plurality of radio frequency (RF) transmitters, when enabled, converts the streams of symbols into a corresponding number of RF signals.