A system and method for scalable processing of a received radio frequency beamform signal is provided. Such a system and methods is useful in conjunction with long range communication between an airborne platform and a surface base station. The scalable system includes a plurality of antenna elements for receiving a directional beam, including a multiplexed data stream, from a base station. A down converter and analog to digital (A-D) converter may then down convert and digitize the multiplexed data stream. A digital splitter may de-multiplex the multiplexed data stream into multiple data streams which are orthogonal to one another. The de-multiplexing may be performed using a fast Fourier transformation on the multiplexed data stream. In these embodiments, the digital splitter divides the multiplexed data stream into frequency groups to de-multiplexing the multiplexed data stream into multiple data streams. The system may also include more than one digital signal processors configured to process the multiple data streams. As the bandwidth of the original multiplexed signal increases, so too can the number of digital signal processors be increased.