A novel algorithm and architecture for adaptive digital beamforming

A novel algorithm and architecture are described which have specific application to high performance, digital, adaptive beamforming. It is shown how a simple, linearly constrained adaptive combiner forms the basis for a wide range of adaptive antenna subsystems. The function of such an adaptive combiner is formulated as a recursive least squares minimization operation and the corresponding weight vector is obtained by means of theQ-Rdecomposition algorithm using Givens rotations. An efficient pipelined architecture to implement this algorithm is also described. It takes the form of a triangular systolic/wavefront array and has many desirable features for very large scale integration (VLSI) system design.