Digital Beamforming Aspects of Wideband Circular Arrays

Circular array antennas are attractive in many applications since they offer uniform beam coverage over 360 degrees in azimuth, and moreover, they can generate radiation patterns with a main beam and sidelobes that are essentially independent of frequency. In this paper we consider a wide band circular array beamforming concept based on phase modes generated by a spatial Fourier transform of the array excitation. In particular, we evaluate the computational load associated with the digital implementation of this beamforming scheme, and compare it to the load of conventional element level beamforming. Based on preliminary numerical analyses, conventional beamforming is the more economical alternative from a computational point of view.