Adaptive Uncertainty Based Iterative Robust Capon Beamformer Using Steering Vector Mismatch Estimation

To overcome the signal-to-interference-and-noise ratio (SINR) performance degradation in the presence of large steering vector mismatches, we propose an iterative robust Capon beamformer (IRCB) with adaptive uncertainty level. The approach iteratively estimates the actual steering vector (SV) based on conventional robust Capon beamformer (RCB) formulation that uses an uncertainty sphere to model the mismatch between the actual and presumed SV. At each iteration, the adaptive uncertainty algorithm self-adjusts the uncertainty sphere according to the estimated mismatch SV. This estimation is derived based on the geometrical interpretation of the mismatch and can be expressed as a simple closed-form expression as a function of the presumed SV and the signal-subspace projection. The other variant of the proposed algorithm that uses a flat ellipsoid to model the mismatch is also proposed. Simulation results show that the proposed approaches offer better interference suppression capability and achieve higher output SINR, as compared to other diagonal-loading-based approaches.