Robust adaptive beamforming based on co-variance matrix reconstruction for look direction mismatch

Abstract

The performance degradation in traditional adaptive beamformers can be attributed to the imprecise knowledge of the array steering vector and inaccurate estimation of the covariance matrix. The inaccurate estimation of the covariance matrix is due to the limited data samples and presence of desired signal components in the training data. The mismatch between the actual and presumed steering vectors can be mainly due to the error in the look direction estimate. In this paper, we propose a novel algorithm to estimate the look direction and to reconstruct the covariance matrix so that near optimal performance without the effect of saturation can be achieved as the input SNR increases. Numerical results also show that all existing beamforming algorithms suffer from saturation effect as the input SNR increases.