Robust adaptive beamforming with low sidelobe levels

Adaptive beamformers will degrade severely when the array weights cannot adapt as fast as the environmental changes, especially when unexpected interferences exist. Low sidelobe levels can increase the ability to suppress the white noise and unexpected interferences. The adaptive beamforming with low sidelobe levels is transformed into a weighted pattern synthesis problem. This weighting function in the sidelobe region is the Capon spatial spectrum which has peaks at the directions of interferences and the interferences will be suppressed by degrading the sidelobe levels. The proposed method is demonstrated through a uniform linear array. © 2013 IEEE.