The dependence of adaptive array beamforming on the covariance matrix estimate

An investigation into the dependence of adaptive array beamforming on the covariance matrix estimate was carried out. The beamforming method used is based on the Cholesky decomposition of the covariance matrix. Both adaptive beam patterns and bearing estimates were obtained and used to study the adaptive properties of different planar array structures. Specifically the dependence of these outputs on the number of samples used to calculate the covariance matrix was investigated. Beamforming was performed on both real and simulated data; both linear and exponential averaging of the covariance matrix were considered.