A system and method are provided to increase data rates available in mmWave wireless communication systems by adapting a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) in a next generation mmWave wireless communication system. The system and method advantageously employ the characteristics of mmWave antenna arrays, including multiple antenna elements in each antenna array, to implement the MIMO scheme by establishing multiple beamformed communication links between a mmWave transmitter and receiver. An outgoing signal is divided into multiple signal elements to correspond to the multiple beamformed links and each of the multiple signal elements is transmitted by the transmitter across a different one of the multiple beamformed links to be reassembled at the receiver. An antenna element allocation scheme is incorporated to assign specific numbers and configurations of antenna elements at each of the transmitted and receiver to each of the multiple beamformed communication links.