Research On Improved Directivity Of Planar Array And Beamformer Performance Test

Beamforming technology is a significant problem in Array Signal Processing research. Also, it is very important for obtaining high array gain. As the sonar technology develops, the number of units and beams in an array have been increased so dramatically that beamformer designing is becoming more and more complicated. Consequently, test to the performance of beamformer is becoming more difficult as well. However, getting the performance of the beamformer correctly is vital in approaching good technical indexes. In order to solve this problem, a hardware platform of virtual instrument based on the PXI bus is designed. Besides, software developed on LabWindows/CVI is programmed. Hence this system can be used in getting the performance of the beamformer automatically.Planar array is widely used in the field of underwater acoustics. A limited beam beamforming algorithm based on the planar wave disassemble theory is proposed here. The directivity of ring transmitting transducer which varies with frequency,beam width,transducer aperture is analyzed according to the algorithm. The simulation result shows that the odd side-lobe is greatly descended while the main-beam width remains.