A novel partial adaptive broad-band beamformer using concentric ring array

The design of an adaptive concentric ring array for broadband beamforming is a challenge due to the large number of adapting coefficients. In this paper, the concept of setting the weights among different rings to enhance the beamformer output is used to design a partial adaptive ring array for applications in nonstationary signal environment. We decompose the weights of the array into two components: the weights for each receiving element within a ring and the weights for each ring. The partial adaptive array is obtained by setting the weight for each receiving element based on a priori knowledge of the direction of arrival (DOA) of the desired signal, and only the weights for each ring are adapted in real-time. The partial array design results in faster convergence rate, better performance and smaller amount of computation compared to a fully adaptive array. Experimental results demonstrate the advantage of the partial adaptive array design.