The deconvolved conventional beamforming for conformal array

Abstract

As the conformal array has the advantages over the large array aperture, superior aeroacoustic dynamics, and wide angle cover range, it is widely used in radar and sonar system. The deconvolved conventional beamforming (dCv) can yield not only the improved direction of arrival (DOA) estimation accuracy in terms of a narrower beamwidth and suppressed side lobes but also the higher directivity index than the CBF. This paper uses an extended R-L deconvolution algorithm and applies the dCv in conformal array. Simulation and experiment results show that the extended R-L can be applied to an arbitrary conformal array with a shift-variant point spread function (PSF). Beyond the high-resolution and high array gain performance advantages, the extended R-L algorithm is shown to be suitable for coherent signals. The results also show that it is better to use the actual PSF than the theoretical PSF when there exit position errors.