All-Pass Filter-Based 2-D IIR Filter-Enhanced Beamformers for AESA Receivers

An active electronically scanned array (AESA) beamforming method that provides enhanced selectivity (interference rejection) for the same number of antennas compared to conventional delay-and-sum (DAS) beamforming is proposed. Conventional DAS 2-D transfer function is modified by introducing complex pole-manifolds based on recently proposed 2-D infinite impulse response (IIR) beam filters, at guaranteed stability. A continuous-time domain signal flow graph is proposed based on first order all-pass filters that eliminate the need of transmission line-based delays used in conventional DAS beamformers. Improved interference rejection is verified using closed-form signal processing models. For an array of 64 antennas, with desired signal direction of arrival (DOA) 10 ^° and interference DOA -60^° from array broadside, the proposed scheme shows an improvement in the signal-to-interference ratio (SIR) around 7 dB for the same number of antennas, compared to DAS beamforming. The improvement in interference rejection is observed for both uniform and non-uniform aperture weights in terms of side lobe performance. A feasibility study is presented on potential CMOS circuit implementation of the proposed AESA for a linear array of eight antennas and maximum operational frequency of 1 GHz.