Patent ID: 8116404

Claim:
A diversity receiver comprising: a plurality of tuners, each tuner of the plurality of tuners capable of receiving a modulated signal from a path of a plurality of distinct paths, wherein each path of the plurality of distinct paths has at least one additive noise characteristic; a plurality of demodulators operatively coupled to the plurality of tuners, each demodulator configured to receive the modulated signal from a tuner of the plurality of tuners, and demodulate the modulated signal; a controller operatively coupled to the plurality of demodulators and the plurality of tuners, the controller configured to determine information for each path, wherein the information comprises a received signal power, an adjacent interfering received signal power, and a desired signal power, compute a ratio of a signal strength to additive noise for each path based on the information; adjust a power of each path based on a comparison of the ratio of signal strength to additive noise for each path with a predetermined threshold, the predetermined threshold corresponding to at least one of a ratio of a desired average received signal strength to an adjacent received signal strength for each path, and a predetermined ratio of signal to noise for each path; and deactivate at least one second path of the plurality of distinct paths when an average signal strength of at least one first path of the plurality of distinct paths is consistently the largest average signal strength of the plurality of distinct paths, and when the at least one first path has a signal strength is above the predetermined threshold by an amount greater than or equal to a predetermined margin; a Maximum Ratio Combining (MRC) circuitry operatively coupled to the plurality of demodulators, the MRC circuitry configured to produce a resultant combined signal by combining the signal of each path obtained as a result of adjusting the power of each path, wherein the resultant combined signal has an improved ratio of signal strength to additive noise.