  The international Galactic Emission Mapping project aims to map and
characterize the polarization field of the Milky Way. In Portugal it will
cartograph the C-band sky polarized emission of the Northern Hemisphere and
provide templates for map calibration and foreground control of microwave space
probes like ESA Planck Surveyor mission. The receiver system is equipped with a
novel receiver with a full digital back-end using an Altera Field Programmable
Gate Array, having a very favorable cost/performance relation. This new digital
backend comprises a base-band complex cross-correlator outputting the four
Stokes parameters of the incoming polarized radiation. In this document we
describe the design and implementation of the complex correlator using COTS
components and a processing FPGA, detailing the method applied in the several
algorithm stages and suitable for large sky area surveys.
