Hardware implementation of a systolic antenna array signal processor based on CORDIC arithmetic

We present the practical hardware implementation of a systolic array for performing recursive least-squares minimisation via orthogonal matrix triangularisation. This is an extremely demanding task for high speed, real-time operation such as required in many modern adaptive antenna, radar, and sonar systems. Since the underlying Givens rotations can be efficiently computed by the CORDIC algorithm, we have implemented a dedicated CORDIC processor element (CPE) in an ASIC. All the required calculations are carried out by a network of these small and simple circuits, which are suitable for constructing a high performance systolic array, either based on MCM technology or as a macro-cell building block for a very highly integrated single chip solution. The design of an adaptive antenna signal processor is described in a top-down manner, from the proposed algorithm down to the bit-level details of the realised component.