Wideband subarray sizing requirements for digital-beamforming arrays employing multiple digitally resteered beams

David D. Aalfs; Robert L Howard

doi:10.1117/12.438151

22 August 2001 Wideband subarray sizing requirements for digital-beamforming arrays employing multiple digitally resteered beams

David D. Aalfs, Robert L Howard

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 4374, Radar Sensor Technology VI; (2001) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.438151
Event: Aerospace/Defense Sensing, Simulation, and Controls, 2001, Orlando, FL, United States

Abstract

Adopting a digital beamforming (DBF) architecture for phased array radars offers the advantage that multiple spatial channels are available the digital computer thereby enabling the use of a wide range of advanced array signal processing algorithms. Many of these algorithms rely on the ability to digitally re-steer beams in the vicinity of the nominal receive sum beam. At the current level of technology, DBF can only be practically implemented at a subarray level for large arrays operating at high frequencies. As a consequence, analog phase shifters at the element level may be set to point the beam in one location while digital re-steering is being used to move the beam to another location. In this paper, the performance impacts of digital re-steering are evaluated in terms of dispersion loss, and a simple correction factor is derived to compensate for a beam pointing error that results from digitally re-steering a beam to a location different from the location used to set the element level phase shifters.

Citation Download Citation

David D. Aalfs and Robert L Howard "Wideband subarray sizing requirements for digital-beamforming arrays employing multiple digitally resteered beams", Proc. SPIE 4374, Radar Sensor Technology VI, (22 August 2001); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.438151

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