The present invention provides a diversity receiver and diversity reception method utilized for CDMA communication system. Antenna switching using antenna diversity is made possible with one decoding subsystem without losing the received data. A receive subsystem 6 receives an intermittent signal for standby operation by a first antenna 1 or a second antenna 2, the signal being sent out every slot cycle from each base station. Information about the received field strengths at the first and second antennas, 1 and 2, is acquired from the signal received by the receive subsystem 6. Base on this information, one of the first antenna 1 and second antenna 2 in a better reception environment when a transition is made from standby mode to a phone conversation is switched and connected to the receive subsystem 6. Then, the conversation is performed.
