Patent ID: 7590399

Claim:
A method for reducing multipath distortion in an FM receiver with a plurality of switchable antennas, comprising the steps of: providing a fast distortion detector, wherein the fast distortion detector monitors a received signal for distortion events less than about fifteen microseconds in duration; providing a slow distortion detector, wherein the slow distortion detector measures distortions relating to quality of the received signal; triggering an antenna search based upon an output of the fast distortion detector; selecting a trial antenna based upon a recent history of average signal levels measured on each of a plurality of antennas; providing a quality measure that is averaged based upon a combined average RF signal level received by all of the plurality of switchable antennas, the quality measure further comprising a determination of an average level of the trial antenna, and calculating an averaging time based upon the combined RF level, such that the averaging time is utilized to calculate the quality measure; and maintaining a present trial antenna as a new reference antenna or selecting another trial antenna based upon a comparison of the quality measure to a previous measurement for a current reference antenna.