Extending the concept of IIR filtering to array processing using approximate spatial IIR structure

摘要

Various array processing techniques applied to uniform linear arrays are involuntarily realized using structures that are analogous to finite impulse response filters. This observation leads to the following question: "can we extend infinite impulse response (IIR) filtering to array processing?". In this paper, we introduce the concept of IIR array in spatial domain. Note that IIR array here does not mean time-domain IIR filtering for array beamforming which is commonly understood. This paper is dedicated to the study of an alternate approach for array signal processing which defines IIR structure in spatial domain. To illustrate the applicability of the concept of IIR array, we propose a new direction-of-arrival estimation technique as well as a beamformer with the spatial domain IIR array implementation. The performance of the proposed methods are comparable to the existing techniques. These illustrations are intended to introduce a new approach which potentially can offer more degrees of freedom to control the performance of the array and reduce the complexity of the system for a desired performance.