Multi-band multi-beam performance evaluation of on-site coding digital beamformer using ultra-wideband antenna array

Cognitive and software defined radios require ultrawideband (UWB) antennas with digital beamforming. Recently, a novel on-site coding receiver (OSCR) architecture was proposed to significantly reduce hardware requirement for digital beamforming. At the receiver side, we propose to code several antenna outputs in the analog domain prior to digitizing them using a single analog-to-digital converter (ADC). Decoding will be done using field programmable gate arrays (FPGA) in the digital domain to perform beamforming. Doing so, hardware requirements are drastically reduced. In this paper, we demonstrate the validation of the OSCR concept by building and testing a multi-band multi-beam receiver. Measurements are performed in an anechoic chamber using an UWB antenna array operating from 200MHz-2.5 GHz, for two transmit signals modulated at f
₁
and f
₂
, and incident on the receiver from various angles. Results show an accurate estimate of the angle of arrival, proving that on-site coding can perform with minimal or no degradation in signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in a multi-beam and multi-band environment.