Adaptive beam forming for radar

It is shown that a judicious combination of digital beam forming with analog methods at intermediate frequency or at radio frequency provides an optimum balance between cost and flexibility. The practical use of digital beam-forming techniques in radar is already feasible for certain systems, especially those in which waveform bandwidth is not unduly high (less than 10 MHz) and in which the dimensionality of the beam former is limited to approximately 100 inputs, this number being limited if necessary by the use of RF of IF beam forming prior to digitization. Advances expected in digital technology make it likely that much wider bandwidths and a much larger number of inputs will be accommodated within a few years. The precision of the method and its suitability for adaptive weighting control methods are seen as making it one of the most promising techniques for increasing radar antenna performance.