A reconfigurable real-time interpolation beamformer

This paper describes an architecture for a compact real-time time-delay sonar beamformer. The design is based on a time-domain interpolation concept, and includes shading, interpolation, and time-delay functions for up to 64 sensor data inputs. A one card per beam configuration has been achieved. The digital interpolation technique used improves the effective sampling rate by a factor of 128. The beamformer design features 16-bit arithmetic precision, up to approximately a 5-kHz sampling rate for each of the 64 sensor input channels, and adaptability to any type of array, e.g., linear, circular, or arrays with nonequal interelement spacings. A 31-beam beamformer system, performing more than 620-million arithmetic operations a second, is discussed.