In radar detection, in order to make the beam have variable directivity, a Capon beamformer is usually used. Although this traditional beamformer enjoys both high resolution and good interference suppression, it usually leads to high sidelobe and is sensitive to array steering vector (ASV) mismatch. To overcome such problems, this study devises a novel, robust adaptive beamformer that is robust to ASV mismatch under the constraint where the sidelobe is oriented to the ground. Moreover, to make full use of the transmit power, the constraint of a low peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) is also taken into consideration. Accordingly, this robust adaptive beamformer is developed by optimizing a transmitting beamformer constrained by ASV mismatch and low PAPR. This optimization problem is transformed into a second-order cone programming (SOCP) problem which can be efficiently and exactly solved. The proposed transmit beamformer possesses not only adaptive interference rejection ability and robustness against ASV mismatch, but also direct sidelobe control and a low PAPR. Simulation results are presented to demonstrate the superiority of the proposed approach. The proposed method can make the peak sidelobe level (PSL) level on the ground side below -30 dB.
Keywords: ASV mismatch; PAPR; SOCP; transmit beamforming.