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

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.     

Broadband beamforming using Laguerre filters

Space-time processing is a well-substantiated method for designing broadband beamformers. In the conventional Frost space-time beamformer, tapped delay line (TDL) filters are used in each branch of the array to create a wideband response for interference suppression. In this article a new space-time beamforming method is introduced in which Laguerre filters replace the traditional TDL filters in the Frost beamformer. The Laguerre filters are fundamentally IIR filters but with only one pole in their structure. Unlike other IIR-based space-time beamforming methods, the proposed method does not need an adaptive procedure for the pole adjustment and is inherently stable. Simulation results show superior performance of the proposed method compared to the Frost beamformer and comparable results against other IIR-based beamformers with much less computational complexity and guaranteed stability.     

Beamformer architectures for active phased-array radar antennas

In active phased-array antennas, the transmit and receive functions are distributed at the antenna aperture using transmit and receive (T/R) modules. The use of T/R modules provides a significant improvement in antenna performance and flexibility in the choice of array architectures. We present a review of various beamformer architectures for active phased-array antennas. This review is limited to corporate-fed active phased-array antennas for radar applications. Beamformer architectures for narrow and wide bandwidth arrays, including the choice of applying an amplitude taper in the T/R module or beamformer network are discussed. Beamformer architectures that increase antenna reliability are also presented     

基于压缩采样和DWPT的认知无线电频谱感知方案

认知无线电频谱感知技术要求能够快速、准确地对高达上千兆赫兹的带宽进行频谱感知,它需要很高速率的模数转换器（A/D）,这对传统的工作在Nyquist采样率下的频谱估计方法提出了很大的挑战。利用实际信号频谱在开放式频谱接入环境中的稀巯性,提出了基于压缩采样和小波包分解的宽带频谱感知方案。通过SIMULINK仿真表明,该方法对宽带信号能以远远低于Nyquist采样率的速率采样,并且能够精确地估计出可用信道列表。     

基于OMP的非合作宽带脉冲压缩雷达信号的压缩感知研究

压缩感知技术可以用来实现对非合作宽带信号的欠采样快速处理。宽带脉冲压缩雷达能够有效解决雷达探测距离和距离分辨力的矛盾,在探测领域得到了广泛应用,为实现对非合作宽带脉冲压缩雷达信号的快速欠采样接收处理,本文首先开展了信号稀疏分解与重构算法研究,通过对贪婪算法、凸松弛类算法、组合类算法三大算法进行对比分析,选用了运行速度快且重构精度高的正交匹配追踪(OMP)算法针对非合作宽带脉冲压缩雷达信号进行压缩感知仿真分析。仿真结果表明:在一定信噪比条件下,OMP算法完全能够实现对非合作宽带脉冲压缩雷达信号的欠采样和信号重构,从而实现了对非合作宽带雷达信号的欠采样处理,为处理非合作超宽带雷达信号提供了很好的理论指导。     

一种低速采样的协同宽带频谱感知方法

频谱感知是通信系统抗干扰和智能化的关键能力.针对认知无线电系统窄带频谱感知技术受制于数模转换器件的发展水平,难以解决认知无线电系统宽带、实时频谱感知的问题,提出一种多节点协作的认知无线电系统宽带频谱感知方法.该方法设计由多个认知节点对目标频段执行次奈奎斯特采样来降低采样速率,采用能量检测方式对采样矢量进行集中式融合判决,实现宽频段范围内干扰信号的谱定位和判断,降低各个感知节点的采样速率,支撑认知网络系统构建高实时、宽频带频谱感知的能力.计算机仿真试验结果表明,所提方法达到90％检测概率时压缩比要求为0.025,具有可靠性与有效性.     

Electronically scanned RF-to-bits beam aperture arrays using 2-D IIR spatially bandpass digital filters

A beamforming system based on two-dimensional (2-D) spatially bandpass infinite impulse response (IIR) plane wave filtering is presented in a multi-dimensional signal processing perspective and the implementation details are discussed. Real-time implementation of such beamforming systems requires modeling of computational electromagnetics for the antennas, radio frequency (RF) analog design aspects for low-noise amplifiers (LNAs), mixed-signal aspects for signal quantization and sampling and finally, digital architectures for the spatially bandpass plane wave filters proposed in Joshi et al. (IEEE Trans Very Large Scale Integr Syst 20(12):2241–2254, 2012). Multi-dimensional spatio-temporal spectral properties of down-converted RF plane wave signals are reviewed and derivation of the spatially bandpass filter transfer function is presented. An example of a wideband antipodal Vivaldi antenna is simulated at 1 GHz. Potential RF receiver chains are identified including a design of a tunable combline microstrip bandpass filter with tuning range 0.8–1.1 GHz. The 1st-order sensitivity analysis of the beam filter 2-D $\mathbf z $ -domain transfer function shows that for a 12-bits of fixed-point precision, the maximum percentage error in the 2-D magnitude frequency response due to quantization is as low as $0.3\,\%$ . Monte-Carlo simulations are used to study the effect of quantization on the bit error rate (BER) performance of the beamforming system. 5-bit analog to digital converter (ADC) precision with 8-bit internal arithmetic precision provides a gain of approximately 16 dB for a BER of $10^{-3}$ with respect to the no beamforming case. ASIC Synthesis results of the beam filter in 45 nm CMOS verifies a real time operating frequency of 429 MHz.     

基于广义旁瓣对消器的Laguerre宽带波束形成

基于Frost 结构的Laguerre 宽带波束形成器可以获得比FIR 宽带波束形成器和IIR 宽带波束形成器更好的性能,但其需要单极点的最优求解过程,存在计算复杂度较高及收敛速度较慢等问题.该文提出一种基于广义旁瓣对消器(Generalized Sidelobe Canceller, GSC)的Laguerre 滤波器宽带波束形成算法.该算法首先建立基于GSC结构的Laguerre 宽带波束形成器模型,然后利用最小二乘方法给出一种低复杂度的极点求解方法,最后利用归一化最小均方根误差方法实现宽带波束形成.仿真实验及理论分析表明,该方法无需基于Frost 结构的Laguerre 宽带波束形成器单极点最优求解过程,在保证算法较高的输出信干噪比的同时,减少了计算复杂度,提高了收敛速度.      

Broadband Beamforming Using TDL-Form IIR Filters

Conventional broadband beamforming structures make use of finite-impulse-response (FIR) filters in each channel. Large numbers of coefficients are required to retain the desired signal-to-interference-plus-noise-ratio (SINR) performance as the operating bandwidth increases. It has been proven that the optimal frequency-dependent array weighting of broadband beamformers could be better approximated by infinite-impulse-response (IIR) filters. However, some potential problems, such as stability monitoring and sensitivity to quantization errors, of the IIR filters make the implementation of the IIR beamformers difficult. In this paper, new broadband IIR beamformers are proposed to solve these problems. The main contributions of this paper include 1) the Frost-based and generalized sidelobe canceller (GSC)-based broadband beamformers utilizing a kind of tapped-delay-line-form (TDL-form) IIR filters are proposed; 2) the combined recursive Gauss-Newton (RGN) algorithm is designed to compute the feedforward and feedback weights in the Frost-based implementation; and 3) in the GSC-based structure, the unconstrained RGN algorithm is customized for the TDL-form IIR filters in the adaptive beamforming part. Compared with the beamformer using direct-form IIR filters, the new IIR beamformers offer much easier stability monitoring and less sensitivity to the coefficient quantization, while comparable SINR improvement over the conventional FIR beamformer is achieved     

基于Laguerre滤波器等价设计的IIR宽带波束形成

常规IIR宽带波束形成器可以获得比FIR宽带波束形成器更好的性能,但其需要多极点的自适应调整过程,存在稳定性无法保证,计算复杂度较高等问题.本文提出一种新的基于IIR滤波器的宽带波束形成算法.该算法基于高阶Laguerre宽带波束形成器,利用双线性变换和函数束方法设计相应的低阶等价IIR宽带波束形成器.仿真实验及理论分析表明,该方法无需常规IIR宽带波束形成器的多极点自适应调整过程,在保证算法稳定性的同时,减少了计算复杂度,并提高了输出信干噪比(SINR).     

采用压缩采样匹配追踪算法的频谱感知

频谱资源的匮乏成为无线电发展的瓶颈,解决频率匮乏有两类方法:一是提高频谱利用率;二是扩大可利用的频率范围。频谱感知技术能提高频谱利用率,但在高频的应用中会面对过高的采样速率、较大的数据量,这对硬件实现提出了艰巨的挑战。本文根据无线电频谱稀疏性介绍一种基于调制宽带转换器的压缩采样匹配追踪（CoSaMP）算法。本文利用调制宽带转换器对无线电信号进行亚奈奎斯特采样,再利用CoSaMP算法对采样后的自相关矩阵求解。本文的方法不仅能应用在更高的频谱,且能提高频谱利用率。仿真结果表明:该方法能在能以一个较低的采样速率对信号进行采样,且CoSaMP算法的恢复误差要小于OMP和ROMP算法。      

数字波束形成器的FPGA实现

数字波束形成技术是天线波束形成原理与数字信号处理技术相结合的产物，其广泛应用于阵列信号处理领域，本文介绍了数字波束形成器的基本原理及其FPGA的实现结构。     

宽带宽角数字阵列雷达发射波束形成技术

在大扫描角的情况下,大孔径相控阵采用移相方法发射不出去宽带高分辨波形。宽带相控阵波束形成通常采用模拟时延单元,但它的量化误差及硬件的高代价阻碍了进一步应用。在基于子阵划分和发射为线性调频信号的前提下,提出了宽带数字阵列雷达发射波束形成方法,同时给出了几种实现框图并对性能进行分析。最后,计算机仿真结果证实了给出的几种宽带数字阵列雷达发射波束形成方法具有易于实现和良好的性能。     

基于一致优化的分布式宽带合作频谱感知算法

在压缩采样的框架下,提出一种基于一致优化的分布式宽带频谱压缩感知算法。算法思想如下:认知无线电网络中每个认知节点首先根据压缩采样理论获取压缩采样,并恢复本地的频谱信息,然后在一跳范围内交换频谱信息。认知节点将获取的邻居节点频谱信息进行加权平均,此加权平均作为频谱恢复一致优化问题的约束,以此来降低计算开销,加速算法的收敛。优化问题通过最优交替方向乘子法迭代求解来获取整个认知无线电网络的频谱估计。给出了算法的收敛性证明,并进行了仿真实验以验证算法的有效性。     

A Systolic Array 2-D IIR Broadband RF Beamformer

A systolic architecture is proposed for the real-time implementation of broadband 2-D IIR beam filters having applications in ultra-wideband (UWB) radio frequency (RF) antenna arrays. Real-time throughputs of one-frame-per-clock-cycle are achieved. A finite-difference time-domain computational electromagnetic model of a typical indoor propagation environment is used to illustrate that the method significantly reduces the bit error rate of the simulated communication system in the presence of multi-user interference, thereby demonstrating the potential application of the architecture in RF communications.      

Subband design of fixed wideband beamformers based on the least squares approach

Subband method is an effective way to reduce the computational complexity of a wideband system and in this paper we study the subband design problem for fixed wideband beamformers, with an emphasis on the design of frequency invariant beamformers (FIBs). We first express the equivalent fullband beam response as a function of the subband beamformer coefficients and then formulate the design problem based on the least squares approach. One direct least squares formulation is first proposed for the design of a general wideband beamformer, and then extended to the FIB design case, followed by three further variations.     

基于数字滤波器组的宽带数字阵列干扰技术

现代通信技术的日益发展,对通信干扰技术提出了严峻的挑战。针对通信干扰技术的发展趋势,提出了一种基于FIR数字滤波器组的宽带数字阵列干扰技术,阐述了该宽带干扰系统的基本组成、工作流程及涉及到的关键技术,如宽带校准技术和宽带波束形成技术。该干扰系统可以实现对常规通信电台、数据链、TACAN、IFF的宽带和多波束多目标同时干扰,大大提高了干扰系统的作战能力,最后对该宽带干扰系统进行了干扰效能评估。     

Adaptive Complex-Coefficient 2D FIR Trapezoidal Filters for Broadband Beamforming in Cognitive Radio Systems

A novel design method is proposed for an adaptive discrete-domain beamformer for the beamforming of temporally broadband-bandpass signals in cognitive radio (CR) systems. The method is based on a complex-coefficient 2D finite impulse response (FIR) filter having a trapezoidal-shaped passband. The temporally broadband-bandpass signals are received by a 1D uniformly distributed antenna array (1D UDAA), where the outputs of the antennas are complex-quadrature sampled by the front end of the CR system. This CR system is based on a software defined radio (SDR) architecture and can be instantly reconfigured by the control system to select the appropriate frequency band and the required sampling rate. The subsequent beamforming enhances the spectral components of the desired temporally broadband-bandpass signals by arranging for the asymmetric trapezoidal-shaped passband of the 2D filter transfer function to closely enclose the region of support (ROS) of the spectrum of the desired signal, whereas the ROSs of the spectral components of the interfering signals are enclosed by the stopband. The proposed novel closed-form design method facilitates instant adaptation of the shape and orientation of the passband of the beamforming 2D FIR trapezoidal filter in order to match the time-varying frequency band and the time-varying bandwidth of the signal, as well as to track and enhance received signals with time-varying directions of arrival (DOAs). Simulated results confirm that, compared with previously reported methods, the proposed method achieves the best overall tradeoff with respect to the instantaneous adaptations of the operating frequency band, the bandwidth, and the time-varying DOAs, the distortion of the desired passband signal, and the stopband attenuation of interfering signals.     

Wideband Antenna Patterns and Impulse Response of Broadband RF Phased Arrays With RF and Photonic Beamforming

The general expression for a monochromatic antenna pattern is extended to a two dimensional function with dependence on both space and time. Expressions for the wideband antenna pattern in space and the impulse response in time are developed. The effects of random errors in the spatial domain and errors common to all elements with fluctuations in the frequency domain are analyzed. Examples are given, including RF beamformers and elements in finite arrays, but with an emphasis on a photonic beamformer, which shows improved performance relative to its RF counterparts in both the spatial and time domains     

Novel Transmit Beamforming Schemes for Time-Selective Fading Multiantenna Systems

Transmit beamforming has been widely adopted for wireless systems with multiple transmit antennas. For a block fading channel, the Grassmannian beamformer has been shown to provide very good performance for finite rate feedback. However, the original Grassmannian beamformer does not take the time domain correlation of the channel fading into consideration. In this paper, based on a first-order autoregressive (AR1) dynamic fading model, we develop two new classes of beamforming algorithms that exploit the interframe correlations in the channel fading. We first introduce an algorithm based on a standard predictive vector quantization (PVQ) approach, and the resulting PVQ beamformer accomplishes superior power delivery at the receiver. However, the error performance of the PVQ beamformer is not satisfactory at high signal-to-noise ratios, and it also has a high implementation complexity. To resolve these issues, we then develop a novel successive beamforming (SBF) algorithm. The new SBF scheme uses the knowledge of the previous fading blocks to aid the beamforming codebook design of the current fading block. The beamforming codebook is constructed based on the successive partition of the surface of a spherical cap. The new SBF scheme accomplishes nearly the same performance as that of the PVQ beamformer, and it has a much simpler implementation. Through numerical simulations, we demonstrate that the proposed beamformers outperform the other previously proposed beamformers at various fading scenarios