Implementation and Experimental Verification of Hybrid Beamforming Algorithm

In Z. Zhang et al., (2003) - M. Rezk et al., (2005), a hybrid beamforming algorithm utilizing a subset of array elements according to receive signal strength has been proposed. The algorithm utilizes a smart switch which selects a subset of antennas that receive the signals with higher strength. Then a beamforming algorithm is applied to calculate the weights for the selected antennas. Since earlier results were based on simulations (Z. Zhang et al., 2003, M. Rezk et al., 2005), a smart-antenna testbed with an 8-element array is designed and implemented by the authors to verify the accuracy and performance of the proposed hybrid beamforming algorithm. Experimental results show that the proposed hybrid algorithm using a subset of the array has nearly the same performance as the adaptive system with the full array. Trade offs regarding beamwidth and the sidelobe levels are expected (M. Rezk et al., 2005), but the proposed approach has the advantage of higher computational efficiency, and less implementation cost