Large Array Null Steering Using Compressed Sensing

In this letter, array null steering is formulated as a sparse recovery problem. In addition, a novel null steering scheme for large arrays by perturbing only a few elements is presented. To achieve this goal, compressed sensing (CS) is used to exploit the sparsity of the perturbed elements. The advantages of the proposed scheme are a significant reduction in hardware cost and lower power consumption, as well as less aging of the elements and faster response. Simulation results show that the CS-based method could be efficiently used to generate wide nulls using at least two elements. The interference rejection ratio achieved by the proposed method is 10-20 dB better than the existing solutions. The performance of different null generation methods in terms of peak-to-sidelobe ratio, pointing error, and beam-width is compared as well. The proposed algorithm is a prominent solution for the future 5G base stations, where a fast and low-cost beam shaping algorithm is required.