An experimental evaluation of a novel sequential beamspace smart antenna system

This paper presents an experimental evaluation of a novel and innovative sequential beamspace (SBS) smart antenna system. The system is capable of accurate direction of arrival (DOA) estimation in beamspace and efficient element space beamforming. Moreover, the robust functionality of such a system includes high resolution radio frequency (RF) emitter DOA estimation and beamforming in a noisy environment in the presence of strong interference. The beamspace DOA estimation accuracy, beamforming pattern, and output signal quality have been thoroughly studied and quantified. The algorithms have been tailored to utilize an 8 element uniform circular array (UCA) and an 8 channel analog beamformer (BF) operating at 5.8 GHz to gather lab-based experimental results. The previously completed simulations in [1], and the experimental results herein show that the proposed system can achieve good performance once it is properly synchronized using a time delay correction filter. In addition, a significant decrease in hardware is realized when operating in beamspace versus element space.