A generic beamforming structure allowing implementation of adaptive processing schemes for 2-D and 3-D arrays of sensors

This paper deals with the development of a generic beamforming structure, for multi-dimensional sensor arrays, that allows the implementation of conventional and adaptive signal processing techniques in integrated active-passive sonar systems. The proposed approach is to separate the computationally intensive multi-dimensional beamforming into two simple modules, which are line and circular array beamformers. The investigation reported in this paper includes the definition of generic sub-aperture schemes for 2-D and 3-D sensor arrays. This generic sub-aperture configuration leads to minimization of the associated convergence period and makes the implementation of adaptive schemes in multidimensional sensor arrays practically achievable