A study Of beamforming techniques and their blind approach

Beamforming is a technique in which an array of antennas is exploited to achieve maximum reception in a specified direction by estimating the signal arrival from a desired direction (in the presence of noise) while signals of the same frequency from other directions are rejected. This is achieved by varying the weights of each of the sensors (antennas) used in the array. It basically uses the idea that, though the signals emanating from different transmitters occupy the same frequency channel, they still arrive from different directions. This spatial separation is exploited to separate the desired signal from the interfering signals. In adaptive beamforming the optimum weights are iteratively computed using complex algorithms based upon different criteria.