Software Defined Phased Array Antenna architecture and design approach

Abstract

Software Defined Radio concept brought high degree of flexibility to radio communication links. The main idea of the concept is to carry most of signal processing to the digital domain where the processing can be driven by software. The same approach can be used for Software Defined Array Antenna. Every Antenna element of the array is equipped by analog-todigital conversion unit which samples a received signal. The Antenna element is constructed as a dual polarization unit; both polarization planes are sampled separately to the I/Q plane vector representation. The data are collected via digital bus by a central unit where the data are processed by adaptive beamforming and demodulation algorithm to maximize quality of desired signal. This architecture has several advantages; interconnection bus is purely digital (easier wiring design), mutual RF coupling between the Antenna units (typically via reference oscillator wiring) is effectively suppressed and the Antenna array is fully deployable without any extra effort. In connection with both polarization planes sampling, we obtain the receiver which is capable to receive signal with any polarization (include elliptical), placed to random part of spectrum within processed bandwidth and modulated by arbitrary type of modulation with maximum signal to noise ratio.