Implementation of a phased array antenna using digital beamforming.

摘要

This work presents the design of a transmitter/receiver Digital Beamformer (DBF) based on the mathematical model of a far-field plane wave incident on a sensor array. Simulations of a DBF transmitter and receiver are performed to control the power pattern of a 4-element linear array, a 16-element linear array and a 16-element rectangular array. For each sensor array, two spatial filters were constructed with different pattern requirements to demonstrate the operation of the DBF. An implementation of a DBF transmitter was performed using a digital processing board containing a Virtex-II XC2V6000 FPGA to control the radiation pattern of a Phased Array Antenna transmitter. A 16-element patch antenna array and the RF front end were fabricated and its radiation pattern was measured in an anechoic chamber to test the performance of the DBF transmitter giving an error of less than 5 degrees in each angular direction of the main beam's angle-of-transmission.