Abstract Maximal-ratio transmission systems with transmit antenna selection is investigated. According to the order statistics of channel flat fading coeffcients, the closed-form expressions are derived for average SNR with any amount of RF chains and average BER with two RF chains, respectively. The algorithm for calculating the minimum of total transmit antennas is presented in terms of reduced RF chains. The method of quantizing transmit precoders is employed in this study to decrease feedback information. Simulation results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed systems under full and quantized transmit precoders. The SNR of the proposed systems has been less degraded by the quantization of transmit precoder than that of pure maximal-ratio transmission systems.