An apparatus and method for improving the signal reception of a digital wireless receiver comprises a processing circuit for processing the preamble information of incoming signals, wherein a first predetermined portion of the preamble information is applied to a first antenna and a second predetermined portion of the preamble information is applied to a second antenna to produce a plurality of processed signals, such that the plurality of processed signals is compared to a predefined preamble sequence to obtain a mean-square error (MSE) for the respective antenna. Then, one of the first and second antennas with a lower MSE is selected to receive and process the incoming signals.