digital beamforming (antenna) (DBF)

In digitalbeamforming (DBF), the digital modification of the radiation characteristics, the phase shifts and amplitude scaling are performed digitally for each individual antenna element. Digital signal processing( DSP) components or dedicated beamforming processors are used for this purpose.

Digital beamforming requires that the signals from each individual antenna element be digitized by an AD converter. The summation is performed by a dedicated processor. Since the digitization offrequencies above 30 MHz cannot be realized or can only be realized at great expense, the receive frequencies for beamforming are mixed to a low frequency at about 10 MHz, which can be converted directly by A/D converters.

With digital beamforming, the antenna pattern can be shaped to have multiple independent main lobes for different directions. Signal distortion and inherent noise are compensated by mutual correlation. In addition, the antenna characteristic can be changed quickly.