Comparison of the performance of time domain and time-frequency domain adaptive beamforming

Adaptive beamforming is a preferable processing technique over its non-adaptive counterpart for obtaining audio signals in array applications due to its excellent anti-interference ability. In terms of implementation, it can be implemented either directly in time domain or in time-frequency domain. This paper compares the performance of time domain adaptive beamforming and time-frequency domain adaptive beamforming in terms of signal fidelity and computational complexity. The limitations of each beamformer are investigated with regard to bearing and frequency separations of the signal and interferences. The time domain implementation is found to perform generally better in terms of signal fidelity, but its computational complexity is much higher than that of the time-frequency domain implementation. In some cases, such as for large separation bearings between the signal and interferences, the time-frequency implementation gives slightly better fidelity performance.