USING SPECTRAL ESTIMATION TECHNIQUES IN ADAPTIVE PROCESSING ANTENNA SYSTEMS.

Two application areas for using spectral estimation techniques are discussed; these are partially adaptive low-sidelobe antennas, and fully adaptive tracking arrays. For the partially adaptive application the information is utilized for efficient assignment of a limited number of degrees of freedom (DOF) in a beamspace-constrained adaptive system in order to obtain a stable main beam, retention of low sidelobes, considerably faster response, and reduction in overall cost. These benefits are demonstrated via simulation examples for a 16-element linear array. For the fully adaptive tracking array application the information is utilized in an all-digital processing system concept to permit stable nulling of coherent interference sources in the main beam region, efficient assignment/control of the available DOF, and greater flexibility in time-domain adaptive filtering strategy.