Beamforming and interference cancellation system using general purpose filter architecture

Abstract

A beamforming system including a multiplier stage for providing a plurality of steered signal terms, each term being a product of an input signal term and a steering signal term. A filter multiplies the steered signal terms by a plurality of respective filter weights to provide a plurality of weighted products. The weighted products are summed to provide an output beam directionally responsive to the steering signal. A microprocessor provides the steering signal terms and the filter weights in response to the input signal and/or user input. In the preferred embodiment, the filter is a reconfigurable, general purpose matched filter configured to multiply a plurality of delayed representations of a respective one of the steered signal terms by a plurality of the weights to provide a plurality of intermediate weighted product terms. The filter further includes a summing circuit for accumulating the intermediate weighted product terms to provide a respective one of the plurality of weighted products. The inventive beamforming system cancels unwanted interference, while forming a beam to allow a desired signal to be received with a maximum signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR). Through a data-capture RAM, the system allows interference samples to be collected and passed to a microprocessor to calculate the optimum filter weights. The received beam may be steered to any desired direction to form an optimal space-time adaptive matched filter.