Embodiments provide a MIMO system having a plurality of service antennas and method for data transmission and reception. The system includes a plurality of service antennas, where each service antenna is configured to simultaneously serve a plurality of terminals and independently receive a pilot sequence from the plurality of terminals. The system further includes a plurality of channel estimation units configured to independently generate an antenna-specific channel estimate based on the received pilot sequence and a plurality of pre-coding units configured to independently generate a coded signal to be transmitted to the plurality of terminals via a respective service antenna based on a set of data symbols and the antenna-specific channel estimate.