Fast Beam Steering and Null Placement in an Adaptive Circular Antenna Array

Abstract

Adaptive circular antenna arrays with beam-steering are very important components of space navigation, and radar systems. A problem may occur when the receiver is jammed by an interference signal, and a quick reaction is required in this regard. An immediate solution to this problem is to have an adaptive fast beamforming algorithm that suppresses the interference signal by steering the radiation pattern nulls in the same direction of the interference signal. A novel technique is proposed here that incorporates genetic algorithm and Schelkunoff nulling theory to achieve fast steering of the main beam and nulls in the desired directions. The proposed computational process allows the genetic algorithm to perform the beam steering and null placement within a considerably reduced processing time compared to the standard optimization technique. The proposed algorithm is employed successfully without compromising all other radiation pattern characteristics.