To improve the robustness of the polarization modulation (PM) technique applied in dual-polarized satellite systems, a zero-forcing aided demodulation (ZFAD) method is proposed to eliminate the impairment to the PM from the depolarization effect (DE). The DE elimination is traditionally dependent on the pre-compensation method, which is based on the channel state information (CSI). While the distance between communication partners in satellite systems is so long that the CSI can not be always updated in time at the transmitter side. Therefore, the pre-compensation methods may not perform well. In the ZFAD method, the CSI is estimated at the receiver side and the zero forcing matrix is constructed to process the received signal before demodulating the PM signal. In this way, the DE is eliminated. In addition, we derive the received signal-to-noise ratio expression of the PC and ZFAD methods with the statistical channel model for a better comparison. Theoretical analysis and simulation results demonstrate the ZFAD method can eliminate the DE effect effectively and achieve a better symbol error rate performance than the pre-compensation method.