ULA and MRA beamforming using conventional and particle filter based algorithms

The article analyze the Uniform Linear Array(ULA) and Minimum Redundance Array (MRA) beamforming arrays taken into account the mutual coupling between the antenna array elements. The comparison shows the advantage of MRA over ULA in narrower beamwidth which is very attractive for adaptive antenna applications and direction of arrival determination. Simulation is performed for real antenna arrays and is shown that the sidelobe level is increasing for each array but for MRA the symmetry also distorted. Therefore for adaptive antenna applications is especially important the compensation of mutual coupling of antennas. Conventional beamformer (BF), Capon (CP), MUSIC and sample matrix inversion (SMI) based on particle filter are investigated and compared.