A receive linear array beamforming using Spatially Variant Apodization

We present a novel beamformer for a receive linear array based on Spatially Variant Apodization. This technique reduces the side-lobe level compared with a uniform linear array, at the same time keeping the main lobe beam-width. For example, the side-lobe level of a 128-element linear array would be better than -30 dB in the presence of phase and amplitude errors based on the proposed technique (5.8 degrees r.m.s. and 0.5 dB r.m.s. respectively).