A personal communications apparatus, for example a cellular telephone
handset, has an antenna diversity arrangement comprising first and second
antennas (102A, 102B) arranged with their polarisation axes slanted with
respect to the median plane of the handset body (218). By a suitable
choice of inclination angles one of the antennas can be arranged to be
substantially vertical in use, whether by right or left handed users,
thereby improving received signal strength from a vertically polarised
base station. The arrangement also enhances diversity operation, since the
correlation between the field strengths received by the antennas is
reduced by their relative orientation.
When the apparatus is used in a system employing a Code Division Multiple
Access (CDMA) techniques, the apparatus preferably includes a 2D Rake
receiver for mitigating the effects of multipath fading and interference.
