The use of six‐port correlators to implement six‐port receivers has been intensively studied. The six‐port receiver can also be modified to a five‐port or a four‐port receiver. However, the six‐, five‐, or four‐port receiver solution requires different baseband processing to recover the baseband In‐phase (I) and Quadrature‐phase (Q) data. A unified mathematical model for the six‐, five‐ and four‐port receivers is presented in this article. Possible solutions to recover the baseband data are discussed and compared. The investigation shows that the six‐port receiver has advantages over the five‐ and four‐port receivers in terms of complexity when analog baseband processing is used. Simulations are conducted to verify the model and to estimate the error vector magnitude versus frequency; the simulation also shows that the six‐port receiver operates over a wider bandwidth than the five‐ or four‐port receiver. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 54:1502–1506, 2012; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com. DOI 10.1002/mop.26833