Joint adaptive beamforming based on distributed moving platforms

A distributed sensor array network consisting of sub-arrays with arbitrary locations and rotation angles placed on unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) platforms is studied, where narrowband electro-magnetic waves are sent out by a transmitter, and the echo signals reflected from the targets are then received by the distributed UAV system. Based on this model, a joint reference signal based beamformer is proposed, leading to improved performance by exploiting the collected information across different sub-arrays simultaneously. Simulation results show that this novel beamformer is capable of extracting the signals of interest while suppressing interfering signals, and a lower mean square error (MSE) and higher output signal to interference plus noise ratio (SINR) are achieved compared with a regular reference signal based beamformer performed using a single sub-array.