Mixed microwave-digital and multi-rate approach for wideband beamforming applications using 2-D IIR beam filters and nested uniform linear arrays

摘要

Abstract The presented work explores novel methods for synthesizing approximately frequency independent array factors at lower hardware complexity for wideband beamforming applications. The proposed approach employs 2-D infinite impulse response (IIR) digital beam filters together with nested uniform linear arrays (ULAs). The array is designed to have multiple levels of nesting. Each level of nesting consists of a ULA covering a temporal subband of the incident wideband signal. The use of nested arrays provides the required aperture size using a smaller number of elements compared to using a single ULA to capture the entire wideband signal. The use of different levels of nesting allows the operation of the digital processor for each sub-band at different clock rates. This is a hierarchical approach that saves both digital VLSI hardware and power consumption. The 2-D IIR digital beam filters that process each subband signal from each of the nested subarray achieves wideband beamforming. Simulations illustrate approximately frequency independent passbands as required in wideband beamforming.