Effect of pointing errors on the performance of the projection beamformer

The projection beamformer generates a steering constraint vector for beamforming by projecting the original steering vector onto the signal-plus-interference subspace of the correlation matrix. This work investigates the effect of pointing errors on the performance of the projection beamformer. A general expression for the output SINR is first derived for the projection beamformer with multiple interferers present. The expression can also be applied to the directional-constraint beamformer except that the steering constraint vector is replaced by the steering vector. Based on the expression for the output SINR, the sensitivity of the projection and the directional-constraint beamformers to pointing errors are examined for the cases of no interferer and a single interferer. Moreover, the performance of the projection beamformer with the source number overestimated is evaluated. Theoretical analysis validated by computer simulations indicates that the projection beamformer performs better than the directional-constraint beamformer, even when the source number is overestimated