Patent ID: 8345716

Claim:
A method for receiving polarized electromagnetic signals at a system, said method comprising the steps of: transducing a received polarized electromagnetic signal to produce a first stream of analog signals representing a first polarization of said electromagnetic signal and a second stream of analog signals representing a second polarization of said electromagnetic signal which is orthogonal to the first polarization; multiplexing, by a multiplexer of the system, said first and second streams of analog signals representing said first and second polarizations; processing said multiplexed first and second streams of analog signals of said first and second polarizations respectively, with a single receiver of the system; converting said multiplexed, processed analog signals representing said first and second polarizations to digital form with an analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converter to generate first digital samples representing said first stream of analog signals representing said first polarization and second digital samples representing said second stream of analog signals representing said second polarization; and processing said first and second digital samples of said first and second streams of analog signals, respectively, to produce first and second digital representations of said first and second streams of analog signals, respectively.