Transmit diversity (TD) has become a common technique used in modern wireless communications systems to improve performance. TD uses multiple antennas (e.g., 110 and 111) at a transmitter (e.g., 105) to transmit multiple encoded datastreams and a single (or multiple) antenna (e.g., 116) at a receiver (e.g., 115) to receive the datastreams. Preferred embodiments of the present invention provide a general architecture (e.g., 705) that can support different TD schemes and even non-TD, simplifying receiver design and minimizing hardware usage.