Using sources of opportunity to compensate for receiver mismatch in HF arrays

Abstract

The spatial processing performance of adaptive sensor arrays is often limited by the nonidentical frequency responses of the receivers in the array over the passband of interest. Addressed here is the problem of estimating digital compensation for mismatches between receiver passbands in high frequency (HF) antenna arrays using interference sources of opportunity. A mathematical model of ionospherically-propagated multipath HF interference is used to develop an adaptive algorithm which estimates the receiver frequency response corrections for each receiver. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is experimentally demonstrated and compared against (1) a commonly used least squares technique, and (2) a highly accurate calibration system using data collected by the receiving antenna array of the Jindalee over-the-horizon radar near Alice Springs in central Australia.