Some Effects of Hard Limiting in Adaptive Antenna Systems

Adaptive antennas are often implemented with the Applebaum-Howells-type adaptive processor usually include a hard limiter between each antenna port and its correlation mixer, primarily for dynamic range compression. Brennan and Reed [3] analyzed the effects of hard limiting, and their conclusions suggest that it does not degrade the steady-state performance of the adaptive processor. Standard and hard-limited processors are compared and it is shown that when the two types of processor have the same sensitivity threshold, the hard-limited one can fail to provide sufficient interference cancellation when the correlation matrix of input signals has two or more eigenvalues of differing magnitudes. The consequence of hard limiting is that (depending on the processor design parameters) the larger of two or more signals can capture the hard limiter, allowing the smaller signals to pass through the processor essentially unattenuated. It is also shown that when a hard-limited processor is designed to provide the same cancellation as a standard one, it must have essentially as large a dynamic range as the standard, processor; therefore, it offers no advantage of dynamic range compression. Moreover, the hard-limited processor lacks a constant sensitivity threshold, which can be a desirable feature of a standard processor. Specific examples are presented for identical-element array antennas and for multiple-beam antennas.     

Processor equivalence for daisy chain load sharing processors

A linear daisy chain of processors in which processor load is divisible and shared among the processors is examined. It is shown that two or more processors can be collapsed into a single equivalent processor. This equivalence allows a characterization of the nature of the minimal time solution, a simple method to determine when to distribute load for linear daisy chain networks of processors without front end communication subprocessors and closed form expressions for the equivalent processing speed of infinitely large daisy chains of processors     

A flexible processor for a digital adaptive array radar

A digital beamforming processor for an adaptive array radar is described. The functionality and the architecture of the processor are strongly driven by a goal of achieving adaptive null depths in the 60-dB to 70-dB range, which necessitates substantial preprocessing of each channel. In particular, conversion to baseband quadrature channels is accomplished digitally using a single A/D converter per channel, and FIR (finite impulse response) equalizing filters are employed in each channel to match channel transfer functions. The processor is highly modular, and this not only distributes the total processing load, but also the I/O (input/output) bandwidth requirement. This is accomplished by distributing the adaptive beamforming algorithm systolically across a linear array of processing nodes. The processor is expandable to a different number of channels and sufficiently flexible to be applied to other problems of an array signal processing nature. Experimental data presented demonstrate that the processor is capable of supporting channel-to-channel cancellation of interfering signals to the level of -65 dB     

Effects of Perturbations on the Performance of Optimum/Adaptive Arrays

An investigation of the effects of system and medium perturbations, and the deviations of signal field statistics from usual assumptions, on the performance of adaptive arrays is presented. The emphasis is placed on the determination of the sensitivity of the adaptive processors to perturbations, rather than its overall performance in a representative background. The numerical results are limited to CW signals, and a frequency domain element space adaptive beam-former is modeled for the majority of the results. Representative comparative results including frequency domain beam space, time domain element space, and matched array processors are also given.     

Optimal divisible job load sharing for bus networks

Optimal load allocation for load sharing a divisible job over N processors interconnected in bus-oriented network is considered. The processors are equipped with front-end processors. It is analytically proved, for the first time, that a minimal solution time is achieved when the computation by each processor finishes at the same time. Closed form solutions for the minimum finish time and the optimal data allocation for each processor are also obtained     

Optimal weight extraction for adaptive beamforming using systolicarrays

Systolic algorithms and architectures for parallel and fully pipelined instantaneous optimal weight extraction for multiple sidelobe canceller (MSC) and minimum variance distortionless response (MVDR) beamformer are presented The proposed systolic parallelogram array processors are parallel and fully pipelined, and they can extract the optimal weights instantaneously without the need for forward or backward substitution. We also show that the square-root-free Givens method can be easily incorporated to improve the throughput rate and speed up the system. As a result these MSC and MVDR systolic array weight extraction system are suitable for real-time very large scale integration (VLSI) implementation in practical radar/sonar system     

An Adaptive Array Signal Processing Algorithm for Communications

An algorithm is described for initial synchronization in a communication system with a digital adaptive array. This algorithm can also be used for message extraction. A set of consecutive complex video samples of the array output is processed to obtain optimum adaptive array weights, based on a least mean square (LMS) error criterion. This computation is performed for each of the possible alternative signals which may be present during an observation interval. The correct synchronization time or message symbol is selected as the one which yields the minimum LMS error. Assuming orthogonality of the alternative codes, a probability distribution for the output of this processor has been derived.     

Comparison between monostatic and bistatic antenna configurationsfor STAP

The unique characteristics of bistatic radar operation on the performance of airborne/spaceborne moving target indicator (MTI) radars that use space-time adaptive processing (STAP) are discussed. It has been shown that monostatic STAP radar has the following properties. 1) For a horizontal flight path and a planar Earth the curves of constant clutter Doppler (isodops) are hyperbolas. 2) For a sidelooking antenna geometry the clutter Doppler is range independent. 3) Clutter trajectories in the cosφ-F plane (F=normalized Doppler) are in general ellipses (or straight lines for a sidelooking array). We demonstrate that these well-known properties are distorted by the displacement between transmitter and receiver in a bistatic configuration. It is shown that even for the sidelooking array geometry the clutter Doppler is range-dependent which requires adaptation of the STAP processor for each individual range gate. Conclusions for the design of STAP processors are drawn     

Task allocation and reallocation for fault tolerance inmulticomputer systems

The goal of task allocation in a set of interconnected processors (computers) is to maximize the efficient use of resources and thus reduce the job turnaround time. Proposed is a simple yet effective method to allocate the tasks in multicomputer systems for minimizing the interprocessor communication cost subject to resource limitations defined by the system and designer. The limitations can be viewed as results from the load balancing since the execution time of each task, the number of available processors, processor speed, and memory capacity are known to the system or designer. As the number of processors increases, the probability of a failure existing somewhere in the systems at any time also increases. Very few established task allocation models have considered the reliability property. In multicomputer systems, we define system reliability as the probability that the system can run the tasks successfully. After the (nonredundant) task scheduling strategy is defined, tasks are then reallocated to processors statically and redundantly. This is a form of time redundancy, in which if some processors fail during the execution, all tasks can be completed on the remaining processors (but at a longer time). Due to static preallocation of tasks this method is simpler and thus more practical than well-known dynamic reconfiguration and rollback recovery techniques in multicomputer systems. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the task allocation and reallocation for hardware fault tolerance by illustrations of applying the methods to different examples and practical communications network multiprocessor system     

多线程控制技术在面向对象实时仿真中的应用

随着实时仿真复杂性的提高,单个的处理器不足以完成所有的必需仿真计算任务。希望能在不同的处理器上完成实时仿真的不同任务,对称多处理器的机制需要软件支持,以使每个处理器通过共享内存进行信息交换。利用多线程控制技术,可以在非全进程开销或不使用共享内存的条件下,使用多处理器。其理由在于线程本身就蕴涵有共享地址的概念。一个多线程的实时程序,利用其中的主线程控制其它的辅助线程,每个处理器用于完成一个辅助的实时计算线程,主线程负责实时时钟的监控,当时钟到达时,启动相应的辅助线程,辅助线程利用图形用户界面(GUI)来监控仿真的进行。     

Analysis of a Signal Processor for an Antenna Array

A signal processor that provides ratio-squared predetection combining, has been investigated for application in an adaptive antenna array. The analysis and experimental data presented here pertain to the signal processing gain when the antenna array is illuminated by a coherent signal source and a partially coherent noise source. For a noise source which is coherent, the processing gain depends on relative strength of the signal and noise, relative directions of arrival, and the usual "array factor." The array exhibits capturing effects much as in an FM receiver. The effective antenna pattern is a superposition of two beams of different magnitudes, one directed to the signal source and the other to the noise source. When the noise is partially coherent, the behavior of the signal processor is quite complex. Analytical prediction and experimental simulation measurement on a four-channel system indicate that the partially coherent noise may be regarded as the source of an incoherent noise component plus a coherent noise component with the magnitude of the latter determined by the coherence coefficient for the noise source.     

Equivalent transformation for a partially adaptive array

A partially adaptive array is one in which elements of a phased array are controlled or adaptively weighted in groups or in which certain elements, called auxiliary elements, are made controllable. Mathematically, this type of array is formed by transforming all of the elements of an array by a nonsquare matrix such that the resulting output vector has a length less than the number of array elements. It is shown that there is an equivalent matrix transform that can effectively be utilized in analyzing the partially adaptive array's performance when a small number of external jammers are present. Processor implementation and convergence rate considerations lead to the desirability of reducing the dimensionality of the cancellation processor while maintaining good sidelobe interference protection. A meaningful measure of canceller performance is to compute the optimal output signal-to-noise ratio. This expression is a function of the jammer, direction-of-arrival vectors (DOAVs), jammer powers, the array steering vector, and internal noise. It is shown that if this expression is computed for the fully adaptive array then it is easily computed for the partially adaptive array by transforming the jammer DOAVs and the steering vector by the orthogonal projection matrix defined by the rows of the subarray transformation matrix and substituting these vectors back into the original expression for the fully adaptive array     

Robust space-time adaptive processing for airborne radar in nonhomogeneous clutter environments

Space-time adaptive processing (STAP) holds tremendous potential for the new generation airborne surveillance radar, in which the phased array antennas and pulse Doppler processing mode are adopted. A new STAP approach using the multiple-beam and multiple Doppler channels is presented here for airborne phased array radar. The approach with space-time multiple-beam (STMB) architecture is robust to array errors and has very low system degrees of freedom (DOFs). Hence, it has low sample support requirement and it is very suitable for the practical planar phased array radar under nonhomogeneous clutter environments. Meanwhile, a new nonhomogeneous detector (NHD) based on the correlation dimension (CD) is also proposed here, which is used as an effective method to screen tracing data prior to detection processing. It can further improve the performance of the STAP approach in the severely nonhomogeneous clutter environments. Therefore, a scheme that incorporates the correlation dimension nonhomogeneity detector (CD-NHD) with the STMB is recommended, which we term CD-NHD-STMB. The experimental simulation results indicate that: 1) the STMB processor is robust to array element error and has high performance under nonhomogeneous clutter environments; 2) the CD-NHD is also effective on the nonhomogeneous clutter. As a result, the CD-NHD-STMB scheme is robust to array element error and nonhomogeneous clutter, and therefore available for airborne phased array radar applications.     

Optimal Array Processor Performance Trade-offs under Directional Uncertainty

Detection performance in terms of the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve is obtained for three specific problems involving either signal or noise source location uncertainty. The array processors are optimum in the sense that they form the likelihood ratio of the outputs of the individual array elements. Performance trade-offs due to signal uncertainty, signal and noise source location uncertainty, and array size are presented.     

Optical moving target detection with 3-D matched filtering

Three-dimensional (3-D) matched filtering has been suggested as a powerful processing technique for detecting weak, moving optical targets immersed in a background noise field. The procedure requires the processing of entire sequences of frames of optical scenes containing the moving targets. The 3-D processor must be properly matched to the target signature and its velocity vector, but will simultaneously detect all targets to which it is matched. The results of a study to evaluate the 3-D processor are presented. Simulation results are reported which show the ability of the processor to detect targets well below the background level. These results demonstrate the capability and robustness of the processor, and show that the algorithms, although somewhat complicated, can be implemented readily. Some effects on the number of frames processed, target flight scenarios, and velocity and signature mismatch are also presented. The ability to detect multiple targets is demonstrated     

Nonlinear Adaptive Control of a Synchronous Machine

A nonlinear adaptive controller for a load-commutated brushless dc machine that allows the machine to develop high torque over a wide range of operating conditions, while satisfying voltage and current constraints on both stator and field circuits, is presented. The approach taken is fundamentally different from past work in that a nonlinear control is formulated from the steady-state model of the synchronous machine. Adaptive algorithms are presented for both the unknown load and motor cases.     

A self-normalizing gradient search adaptive array algorithm

A method is described to normalize the step parameter and perturbation amount used for gradient search adaptive algorithms. The step normalization assures rapid stable convergence. The perturbation normalization also assures rapid stable convergence and limits the output perturbation noise to a level below thermal noise. The normalizations are computationally simple and are consistent with the use of a single receiver at the adaptive array output. Results are presented to verify the robustness of the technique.<>     

Optimum Active Array Processing Structure and Space-Time Factorability

An active array processor is concerned with the problem of detecting a signal echo, reflected from a target, in the presence of reverberation (clutter). The processor can also be used to estimate target range and bearing. It is a priori not evident whether the optimum (likelihood ratio) detector can be factored into spatial and temporal operations, thus resulting in a simpler processor implementation. This paper studies this problem for a linear continuous array in a reverberation-limited environment. Conditions on signal, reverberation, and array parameters are derived under which the optimum detector is factorable. The validity of using factorability as a criterion of signal design is briefly examined. Finally, the relationship between space-time factorability and range-bearing estimates is pointed out.     

Tracking of conventional beamforming with hydrophone array ofvarying geometry

In conventional beamformers of a large towed hydrophone array of fixed linear array geometry the sensors may be displaced from their nominal positions due to various kinds of force on the array. The displacements are usually time varying and can severely degrade the performance of the beamformer. This problem is approached by restoring the sensor output signals before beamforming by adaptively tracking and compensating for the displacements. This approach does not require modifications of the conventional shipboard beamformer and hence can be used cost-effectively to upgrade existing conventional systems. Two adaptive algorithms are used for two different cases: known sensor moving trajectories and unknown trajectories with relatively small displacements compared with the intersensor spacing. Tracking performance of the algorithms is analyzed. Simulation results show that for known sensor trajectories the algorithm significantly improves the performance of the conventional shipboard beamformer whereas only limited improvement can be achieved when the trajectories are unknown     

Phase-only LMS and perturbation adaptive algorithms

The author defines a phase-only gradient-based adaptive algorithm analogous to the least mean square (LMS) algorithm. Two phase-only perturbation algorithms are then defined. It is shown that the gradient for the perturbation algorithms can be obtained by cross-correlating binary perturbation sequences, that are applied to the adaptive phases, with the resulting instantaneous output power or voltage. It is also shown that a single set of phase-only adaptive weights can be used to simultaneously null interference in multiple output beams. Simulation results are presented for all of the new algorithms. The phase-only perturbation techniques eliminate the need for element level receivers and support low cost retrofitting of adaptive nulling on phased arrays by using conventional beamsteering circuits to apply the adaptive weights