A self-steering array for nonsinusoidal waves based on array impulse response measurement

An array antenna consisting of identical distortion-free sensors used for the reception of nonsinusoidal waves with finite bandwidth is modeled as a linear time-invariant causal system. It is shown that the impulse response of the array sensors is a function of the angle of incidence of the received wavefront. Based on this model, a self-steering array system for beam forming with noise-free rectangular pulses is developed. Its beam-forming mechanism determines the array impulse response to point a main beam in the direction of the source from which the waves are arriving. The array system is advanced further so that nonsinusoidal waves that suffer distortions due to scattering from a large scatterer, and/or dispersive propagation, can be processed to form a main beam in the direction of the scatterer, and to achieve classification and identification of the unknown scatterer.>