Onboard digital beamforming: Algorithm and results

A one-dimensional digital beam-forming (DBF) algorithm that is suitable for onboard real-time implementation is described in this article. A couple of techniques for generating a set of DBF coefficients will be also proposed to improve radar system performance such as signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and/or range ambiguity (as a part of multiplicative noise ratio, MNR), and range impulse response parameters including compression gain, range resolution, etc. Results from simulations demonstrate improvement obtained by these techniques at the output of digital beamforming process. Finally, via the proposed onboard DBF algorithm, a processed synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image generated from data of airborne SweepSAR experiment [1] is exhibited.