A robust method for broadband beamforming in the presence of pointing error

Abstract This paper presents a robust technique for broadband beamforming in the presence of pointing error. Based on the fact that the output power of an optimized beamformer achieves a maximum if the steering vector coincides with that of the desired signal, the technique iteratively searches for the correct ‘steering vector’ of a broadband source with a known bandwidth. By approximating the ‘steering vector’ by its first order Taylor series expansion in terms of the steering angle, the maximization process reduces to a one-dimensional optimization problem. Numerical results are presented to illustrate the performance achievable.