Novel All-Digital Beamforming Techniques for L/S/C-Band Multi-Channel Systems Leveraging Hardened DSP on Integrated Circuits

As data converter sample rates increase there is a push to quantify the feasibility of all-digital beamforming solutions in L/S/C-band and beyond. For those systems requiring multiple channels to achieve the performance required, measured data on both the individual and combined-channel transmitter and receiver performance using these new converters is warranted for system architects to derive the required system-level models. This paper discusses measured multi-channel phase noise, noise spectral density, linearity and spurious improvements when using a direct-S-band-sampled digitizer transceiver as the backbone of the design. Over-the-air all-digital beamforming is also demonstrated using the hardened DSP on these new digitizer integrated circuits.