Constrained Beamformer Optimization for Adaptive Antenna Arrays

Digital beamforming algorithms are commonly used for spatial filtering which effectively result in more benign channel characterestics with reduced interference and delay spread. A new constrained beamforming (CBF) algorithm is presented which allows optimum beam steering and interference cancellation for arbitrarily spaced directions The proposed CBF combines the properties of the Bartlett and the Capon beamformer while maintaining minimum power requirements. It is shown that the result can be interpreted as the beam vector representation using special interpolating fundamental functions. [This work has been supported by BMBF.]