A method of estimating channel conditions for use in a MIMO communication system includes the steps of, at a receiver: computing a SINR metric for all pre-coding matrices; computing a first capacity metric for the bandwidth from the SINR metrics, and selecting a rank which maximizes the first capacity metric; computing a second capacity metric for each frequency channel from the SINR metrics and the selected rank, and selecting one or more pre-coding matrices which maximize the second capacity metric; computing a third capacity metric from the second capacity metric, selected rank and selected pre-coding matrices for each transmission layer within each frequency channel, and selecting one or more frequency channels which maximize the third capacity metric; and transmitting the selected rank, selected pre-coding matrices and selected frequency channels to the transmitter for use in subsequent data transmissions.