Adaptive signal processing in antenna arrays with allowance for the rank of the impulse-response matrix of a multipath channel

摘要

We consider adaptive spatial signal processing in antenna arrays under conditions of multipath propagation. It is shown tat estimation of the elements of the matrix of multichannel impulse response (MCIR) in the receiving channels of antenna arrays is not sufficient for performing such a processing, and we should also determine the MCIR-matrix rank, which is equal to the minimum number of adaptive spatial channels for reception of a multipath signal. We propose a threshold method for estimating the rank of the MCIR matrix on the basis of the statistical properties of maximum-likelihood estimation of the elements of this matrix and a priori information on the properties of internal noise in the receiving channels of the system. The weight vectors of the beamformer processor ensuring adaptive spatial signal processing are estimated.