Patent ID: 7103118

Claim:
A combiner for use in a diversity radio receiver which receives a plurality of diversity I and Q modulated signals each carrying I and Q information signals, wherein said received I and Q signal pairs are digitized at a sampling rate T and converted to baseband I and Q signals wherein each said converted I and Q signal pair represents a diversity I and Q vector for input to said combiner, said combiner comprising: (a) for each sample stream of said plurality of diversity I and Q vectors input to said combiner, a discriminator configured for producing for each sample an output discriminated I and Q vector (I Δ ,Q Δ ) having a phase representative of the frequency of said information signals and an amplitude proportional to the power of said information signals; (b) adders configured for adding together, for each set of sampled diversity vectors, said discriminated I signals (I Δ ) to produce a combined discriminated I signal (I cΔ ) and for adding together, for each set of sampled diversity vectors, said discriminated Q signals (Q Δ ) to produce a combined discriminated Q signal (Q cΔ ), whereby said combined discriminated I and Q signals represent a combined discriminated vector (I cΔ , Q cΔ ) having a phase which is determined by one or more of the phases of said diversity I and Q vectors depending upon the relative powers of said diversity I and Q vectors; (c) a phase accumulator configured for adding to an accumulation vector, over successive samples, said phases of said combined discriminated vectors (I cΔ , Q cΔ ) to produce an output combined I and Q signal pair (I c , Q c ).