A method and system for processing communication signals is provided and may comprise, quantizing a channel estimate at a MIMO receiver onto a codebook based on a cost function, wherein the codebook comprises a plurality of unitary matrices. A codebook index may be fed back from the MIMO receiver to a MIMO transmitter, wherein the codebook index is associated with one of the plurality of unitary matrices that minimizes the cost function. The cost function may be minimized by choosing a smallest scalar cost from a plurality of scalar costs, wherein each one of the scalar costs is generated from one or more sums and one or more products of elements of a product matrix, and wherein the product matrix is generated from one of the plurality of unitary matrices, a matrix comprising the channel estimate, and their respective Hermitian Transposes.