Distributed Phased Arrays With Wireless Beamforming

This paper examines various aspects of distributed phased arrays that incorporate wireless beamforming. Each array element is comprised of a self-contained transmit receive module and local controller. There are no hardwired connections between the modules and the central processor. Timing and synchronization are performed wirelessly in real time, and baseband received signal data is also transferred wirelessly. The system design and performance tradeoffs are discussed, including the wireless network configuration and data rate, throughput and latency, signal processing, and timing and synchronization approaches. A two element demonstration array was built and tested to validate critical concepts and to develop array signal processing and controller software.