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Abstract

A method and apparatus for diversity-combining two electromagnetic signals (11,21) within a receiver (25). Two separated antennas (10,20) are employed. The antennas (10,20) are separated by some combination of spatial, polarization, and pattern separation. The first antenna (10) receives the first signal (11), and the second antenna (20) receives the second signal (21). Coupled to at least one of the antennas (10,20) is a circuit (12) for varying the gain and the phase of the signal (11,21) received at said antenna (10 or 20, respectively). The gain and the phase are constrained to be selected from within a finite set of preselected discrete gains and a finite set of preselected discrete phases. A search module (6) searches through all of the gain/phase combinations to optimize the signal-to-impairment ratio within the receiver (25). When the signal-to-impairment ratio is optimized, the gain and the phase are fixedly established. The search (6) is broken into two discrete searches, a relatively coarse search and a relatively fine search. The searching step (6) is typically performed whenever the signal-to-impairment ratio falls below a preselected value. A smart rounding module (14) can be used to recover the phase of the carrier of the combined signal (22) without any significant performance degradation.

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