Comparative Analysis of Conventional and Adaptive beamforming for Linear Array

In today’s times, when national security is much of a concern for every country, military and sound-ranging equipment should be well-versed with all facilities. This paper analyzes the two most important algorithms for estimating the direction of arrival (DOA) of an acoustic source applied on a uniform linear arrangement of microphones. These are minimum-variance-distortionless-response (MVDR) and conventional delay-and-sum (DAS) beamforming. These algorithms calculate array weights. The basic idea behind calculating array weights is to maximize the gain in direction of concern and reducing the power in unwanted directions. In DAS, array weights are assumed to be constant and of equal magnitude irrespective of the input whereas in MVDR the weighting of elements is changed based on the input signals, or the array weights are adapted to the input. The parameter that has been used for the performance comparison of both the algorithms is root-mean-square-angular-error (RMSAE). The simulation results, in this paper, strengthens the fact that the MVDR algorithm overrules and outperforms the conventional DAS beamforming technique.