Patent ID: 7633442

Claim:
A satellite communication subscriber device comprising: a switched beam antenna comprising an active antenna element and a plurality of passive antenna elements for generating a plurality of antenna beams for receiving signals from at least one satellite, and at least a portion of the plurality of antenna beams having different polarizations; a receiver comprising a quality metric module for calculating a quality metric on the signals received by each antenna beam; a beam selector coupled to said switched beam antenna for selecting the plurality of antenna beams based on selectively changing termination impedances of said plurality of passive antenna elements; an antenna steering algorithm module for running an antenna steering algorithm for operating said beam selector for scanning a portion of the plurality of antenna beams based upon a known direction of the at least one satellite, receiving the calculated quality metrics from said receiver for each scanned antenna beam, comparing the calculated quality metrics to a low quality metric threshold, and ignoring antenna beams having calculated quality metrics below the low quality metric threshold; comparing the remaining calculated quality metrics to one another for the corresponding antenna beams having quality metrics above the low quality metric threshold; and selecting one of the scanned antenna beams based upon the comparing of the remaining calculated quality metrics for continuing to receive signals from the at least one satellite; and said antenna steering algorithm module also determines if a rescan is to be performed, and if the rescan is to be performed, then repeats the operating, receiving, comparing and selecting associated with running the antenna steering algorithm.