Adaptive monopulse beamforming with partial parallel structure

A new recursive algorithm with the partial parallel structure based on the linearly constrained minimum variance (LCMV) criterion for adaptive monopulse systems is proposed. The weight vector associated with the original whole antenna array is decomposed into several adaptive weight sub-vectors firstly. An adaptive algorithm based on the conventional LCMV principle is then deduced to update the weight sub-vectors for sum and difference beam, respectively. The optimal weight vector can be obtained after convergence. The required computational complexity is evaluated for the proposed technique, which is on the order of O(N) and less than that of the conventional LCMV method. The flow chart scheme with the partial parallel structure of the proposed algorithm is introduced. This scheme is easy to be implemented on a distributed computer/digital signal processor (DSP) system to solve the problems of the heavy computational burden and vast data transmission of the large-scale adaptive monopulse array. Then, the monopulse ratio and convergence rate of the proposed algorithm are evaluated by numerical simulations. Compared with some recent adaptive monopulse estimation methods, a better performance on computational complexity and monopulse ratio can be achieved with the proposed adaptive method.