A systolic array processor for MVDR beamforming

The authors describe a novel systolic array which can efficiently compute the minimum variance distortionless response (MVDR) from an array of antenna receiver elements in a rapidly changing signal environment. The MVDR beamforming problem amounts to minimising, in a least squares sense, the combined output from an antenna array subject to K independent linear equality constraints each of which corresponds to a chosen `look direction´ The constraints are independent in the sense that, for each new vector of received data samples, it is necessary to compute the minimum array output subject to each constraint in turn. This involves the solution of K independent, but closely related, least squares minimisation problems