Patent ID: 8509723

Claim:
An apparatus comprising: antennas P 11 , P 12 , P 21 and P 22 ; a controller; a first receiver; a second receiver; a first selector for selecting for said first receiver, pursuant to a first control signal from said controller, a first highest-ranked antenna of said antennas, not currently selected for said second receiver, and applying a signal of the first highest-ranked antenna to said first receiver; a second selector for selecting for said second receiver, pursuant to a second control signal from said controller, a second highest-ranked antenna of said antennas, not currently selected for said first receiver, and applying a signal of the second highest-ranked antenna to said second receiver; and a maximum ratio combiner responsive to an output signal from said first receiver, and to an output signal from said second receiver; where said controller develops said first control signal and said second control signal in response to said output signal of said first receiver and said output signal of said second receiver, and said control signals are restricted to refrain from concurrently changing the antennas selected by said first selector and said second selector, and when changing the antenna selected for said first receiver, to refrain from selecting the antenna selected for said second receiver; where said controller is configured to re-rank the first highest-ranked antenna as a lower-ranked antenna and to re-develop the first control signal to select a highest-ranked, available antenna of said antennas, not currently selected for said second receiver, in response to a signal of the first highest-ranked antenna being associated with a first metric value below a predetermined threshold.