A novel algorithm and architecture for adaptive digital beamforming

A novel algorithm and architecture are described which have specific application to high performance, digital, adaptive beamforming. It is shown how a simple, linearly constrained adaptive combiner forms the basis for a wide range of adaptive antenna subsystems. The function of such an adaptive combiner is formulated as a recursive least squares minimization operation and the corresponding weight vector is obtained by means of the decomposition algorithm using Givens rotations. An efficient pipelined architecture to implement this algorithm is also described. It takes the form of a triangular systolic/wavefront array and has many desirable features for very large scale integration (VLSI) system design.