A novel approach for robust adaptive beamforming

A robust technique for adaptive array beamforming in the presence of steering vector error is proposed. It is based on the fact that an optimized steered-beam adaptive beamformer possesses the maximum output SNR when the steering vector coincides with the signal phase vector. The steering vector is adjusted iteratively to meet the actual signal phase vector. The resulting beamformer provides optimum performance in the sense of satisfying the single-look direction constraint without any tradeoff between the array performance and robustness. Thus the difficulties of using conventional algorithms can be overcome. Results of several computer simulations are given for illustration