Experimental verification of an adaptive UWB beamformer based on multidimensional filtering in a real radio channel

Ultra-wideband (UWB) communication systems can benefit significantly from adaptive wideband beamforming networks, as to have the ability to spatially discriminate some angles of arrival from others could greatly reduce the impact of multipath and co-channel interference. Wideband agile beamforming networks remain a major challenge and are a topic of intense research. State-of-the-art beamforming hardware generally consists of variable delay elements in a delay-and-sum architecture where signals are summed coherently after experiencing a variable true-time-delay (TTD) component. This paper explores a method of achieving UWB beamforming based on multidimensional filtering using sampled signals from a linear antenna array. This beamformer is experimentally characterized in a real UWB radio channel using two techniques.