Hard clipped beam former
AssigneeRaytheon Company
InventorArent H. Kits van Heyningen
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A cylindrical array of radiating elements or sonar transducers each of which is coupled by a clipping circuit to a multiply tapped shift register for imparting delays to the signals of the elements for forming a beam of radiant energy. Sidelobes on the radiation pattern are reduced by multiplying the signals of the shift registers by weighting factors prior to their summation for forming a beam, clipped signals serving as unitary factors of positive or negative sign in the multiplication.
Claims5
A beam forming system coupled to individual elements of an array of radiating elements, the beam forming system comprising:
- means coupled to individual ones of said radiating elements for clipping signals produced by said radiating elements in response to radiation incident thereupon;
- means for weighting said clipped signals, individual ones of said clipping signals from individual ones of said radiating elements being multiplied by individual weighting factors, the magnitude of a weighting factor being dependent on the position of the corresponding one of said radiating elements relative to the orientation of a beam to be formed by said beam forming system, said weighting being accomplished by affixing a sign to weighting factors of said weighting means, said sign depending on the relative phases of signals incident upon said radiating elements of said array;
- means coupled to said weighting means for summing together the weighted values of said signals;
- and
- means coupled to said summing means for filtering the sum of the weighted clipped signals, said filtering means including a low pass filter for providing a continuous analog waveform.
A beam forming system for combining signals of individual elements of an array of radiating elements, the beam forming system comprising:
- means coupled to individual ones of said radiating elements for equalizing the amplitudes of signals produced by individual ones of said radiating elements in response to radiation incident thereupon;
- means for weighting individual ones of said signals having equal amplitudes to provide weighted signals, the magnitude of the weighting being dependent on the position of the corresponding one of said radiating elements for each of said equal amplitude signals relative to said array, said weighting being accomplished be affixing a sign to weighting factors of said weighting means, said sign depending on the relative phases of signals incident upon said radiating elements of said array;
- and
- means coupled to said weighting means for providing a filtered summation of said weighting signals, the bandwidth of said filtered summation being equal to the bandwidth of one of said signals of said radiating elements.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.