Phased Array Antennas

The objective of this article is to illustrate the principles of digital beamforming, which can process multiple targets in the main lobe in contrast to conventional phased arrays where the resolution is limited by the conventional Fourier processing. In addition, it is illustrated how to combine the electromagnetic processing related to the mutual coupling between the antennas and the effects of the ground in the adaptive signal processing-based methodology. A direct data domain least-squares method is presented to illustrate that statistical considerations, which are often unknown, need to enter into the processing. Finally, it is shown how to simultaneously use the same array to adaptive process signals arriving at two different frequencies impinging on the same array in the presence of interferers. Keywords: Phased arrays; digital beamforming; single snapshot processing; adaptive antennas