Robust Minimum Variance Beamforming Based on Signal Power Maximization

Abstract

Conventional beamformers are very sensitive to steering vector mismatches and their performance degrades in the presence of array mismatches. This paper proposes a robust minimum variance beamforming algorithm based on signal power maximization. In the proposed algorithm, the beamforming vector is determined by maximizing the signal power while minimizing the output power of the beamformer, with the signal distortionless response constrained to be unity. Numerical results show that the proposed beamformer is robust to the steering vector mismatch, and achieves better SINR performance than other robust beamforming algorithms when the mismatch in the signal look direction is large.