Patent ID: 7860182

Claim:
A communications device comprising: an antenna array comprising a plurality of antenna elements for receiving at least N spatially independent signals; a receiver coupled to said antenna array and comprising an analog receiver circuit for receiving the N spatially independent signals, and having a bandwidth of at least N times an information bandwidth of the spatially independent signals, and a digital receiver circuit coupled to said analog receiver circuit, and sampling the N spatially independent signals at a rate of at least N times a Nyquist rate which would have been required if a single antenna element had been used to receive the signals, and comprising an analog-to-digital converter for converting the N spatially independent signals to N spatially independent digital signals; a controller coupled to said antenna array and comprising a switching circuit coupled to said antenna array for switching between said plurality of antenna elements for sampling the N spatially independent signals by said antenna array, and a timing circuit coupled to said switching circuit for coordinating sampling of the N spatially independent signals by said antenna array based on sample timing of the N spatially independent digital signals by said analog-to-digital converter; and a processor coupled to said digital receiver circuit for demultiplexing the sampled N spatially independent digital signals, and coupled to said timing circuit for providing the sample timing of the N spatially independent digital signals by said analog-to-digital converter.