X-Band Receiving Phased Array with Digital Beamforming Using RFSoC

Radio frequency system-on-chip (RFSoC) has be-come a promising candidate for replacing traditional analog and digital front-ends in the development of fully digital phased arrays. As the sampling frequency is limited to a few GHz, RFSoC can't be used for direct sampling at X-band. In this contribution, an X-band phased array receiver system with RFSoC is presented, which includes down-conversion to L-band, in which all the channel imperfections are incorporated in the beamforming algorithm. A rigid-flexible
$4\times 4$
antenna array, consisting of four subarays, is designed and fabricated for demonstration and verification. The proposed method is demonstrated using minimum variance distortionless response (MVDR) beamforming applied in the Xilinx RFSoC ZCU111.