A novel adaptive phase-only beamforming algorithm based on semidefinite relaxation

The adaptive phase-only beamforming technique is very important for conventional phased array radar to suppress interference. Similar to conventional phased array radar, for the digital array radar, the adaptive phase-only beamforming technique is also very useful and can be used to enhance the radar power by making full use of transmit module microwave power of each array element. In this paper, a phase-only algorithm based on semidefinite relaxation is proposed. It can suppress interference by minimizing the array output power and maintain the desired signal without distortion. The phase-only weighting is converted to a non-convex quadratic optimization problem, then to a convex optimization problem by the semidefinite relaxation (SDR) technique which can be solved easily. The experimental results demonstrate the correctness and effectiveness of the proposed approach.