Patent ID: 8638890

Claim:
A receiver for demodulating an information signal from a modulated signal, the receiver comprising: a complex mixer for converting the modulated signal to a complex modulated signal comprising a first in-phase component and a first quadrature component; and a digital demodulator in communication with the complex mixer, wherein the demodulator comprises at least one processor circuit configured to: apply a phase differencer for generating an output function in terms of a phase difference of the complex modulated signal, wherein the phase differencer is further configured to: convert the first in-phase component to a function of a phase difference of the first in-phase component expressed in digital time; and convert the first quadrature component to a function of the phase difference of the first quadrature component expressed in digital time, wherein the phase differencer comprises a plurality of cascaded stages, wherein each stage is programmed to convert an input in-phase component to a function of a phase difference of the input in-phase component and to convert an input quadrature component to a phase difference of an input quadrature component, wherein the input in-phase component for the first stage of the plurality of cascaded stages is the first in-phase component and wherein the output of the last stage of the plurality of cascaded stages is the output function; and apply a four quadrant inverse tangent to the output function to generate the information signal.