Abstract: The present invention utilizes a dual polarization reception system (200) that utilizes the energy available in orthogonal polarizations to effectively increase link margin, thereby allowing for adequate signal quality reception in difficult environments. A co-polarized and a cross-polarized signal are separately downconverted and demultiplexed. The signals from each demultiplexed output are then sampled and weighted. The weighted samples for each polarity are combined in soft decision combining/decoding circuitry (255, 360), and this circuitry determines the most likely state of a received symbol's transmitted value.