Patent ID: 6901123

Claim:
An antenna system comprising: a plurality of antennas having a prescribed multidimensional spatial relationship with respect to one another; a plurality of carrier demodulators respectively coupled to receive downconverted signals representative of outputs of said plurality of antennas, and being operative to output baseband, carrier-demodulated signals; a signal processor which is operative to process a combination of said baseband, carrier-demodulated signals to derive baseband information signals contained therein; and wherein operation of each of said plurality of carrier demodulators is controlled in accordance with said baseband information signals derived by said signal processor, and wherein each of said carrier demodulators is operative to regenerate a coherent carrier reference signal for demodulating said down converted signal from each of said plurality of antennas, and is operative to convert a carrier-demodulated signal to soft decision information signals, and wherein said signal processor is operative to combine said soft decision information signals to produce a composite baseband signal, and to process said composite baseband signal to derive baseband decision information signals, which are fed back to control the internal operation of each of said plurality of carrier demodulators.