Beamforming

Siham HADOUDOU Mustafa HIRI

School of Applied Sciences Tetouan School of Applied Sciences Tetouanh
siham.hadoudou@gmail.com mstcr766@gmail.com

Abstract

Blind sources separation is made for the estimation of mixed sources without knowing any information about
the original sources separate. However, beamforming has a similar role as the BSS but this time beamforming
serves to estimate the arrival angle DOA of the audio signals. The main objective of this paper is to provide a
comparative study of various classical multi-channel DOA algorithms and high-resolution, subspace-based,
multi-channel DOA algorithms for multiple signals arriving at different DOA.

I. Introduction

lind sources separation is a technique

B among the known techniques in the

field of telecommunication, this tech-
nique is used to make an approximation for
Figure 1: Smart antenna transceiver architecture

in this papier we present in section2

estimating the original source signals using
only the information of the mixed signals
observed in each input channel. The BSS
applies especially to the realization of high
quality hands-free telecommunication systems
using speech recognition and noise reduction.
The BSS also uses an analysis called ICA
Principal Component Analysis [1], which
relies mainly on higher order statistics and
information theory [2]. spatial position of the
sources and applies a suitable spatial filter
to the mixing channels so as to improve our
target source and cancel the other sources.
Smart antennas have great potential to
overcome the degradation of these systems
by exploiting the space domain to reduce the
effects of interference, extend the range and
coverage of wireless networks, increase system
capacity, and obtain achievable data. It is an
interdisciplinary subject that requires knowl-
edge and skills in areas such as antenna arrays,
signal processing, digital communications, RF
engineering and wave propagation.[3]
the beamforming principale and the
Doa estimation than the ESPRIT and MUSIC
algorithms , in section 3 âĂe˛ and we summrizs
with a conclusion.
II. Beamforming
i. Definition and principle
Beam formation is a term that comes from the
fact that the first spatial filters designed to
form pencil beams aim at receiving a signal
radiating from a specific location and attenu-
ating signals from other locations. "forming
beams" to indicate energy radiation. However,
beam formation is applicable to radiation or
energy reception.[4] But there are several types
of beamforming such as scannig, convolutional
beamforming and adaptive beamforming, in
our study we are interested in this last type.
Adaptive beamforming is a commonly used
technique that allows the system to operate
in a disturbed environment by adaptively
modifying the array diagram of the system, so

1
that null values are generated in the angular lo-
cations of the interference sources Figure 1 [5].
Adaptative beamforming have two ref-
erences : temperal reference and spatial
references,for the first reference we have
different adaptative algorithms, but in the
second reference we have DOA algorithms,that
we are interessting. In the next part we have
more details about DOA estimation.
Figure 2: Adaptive Beamformer
ii. Direction of arrival (DOA) Estima-
tion
In the theory of network signal processing,
there is an important concept called the spatial
spectrum, which presents the distribution of
signals in all directions of space. If the spatial
spectrum of the signal can be obtained, the di-
rection of arrival (DOA) can also be obtained.
Therefore, the estimation of the spatial spec-
trum can also be called estimation of the DOA.
-Structure of spatial spectrum estimation
system:
The space can be divided into three corre-
sponding spaces, namely target stage, observa-
tion stage, and estimation stage [6].
2
Figure 3: The system structure of DOA estimation
• The target step is a step consisting of sig-
nal source parameters and a complex envi-
ronment. To estimate them, we use certain
specific methods
• The observation stage is a stage that re-
ceives the radiation signals from the target
stage.
• The estimation step is a step that uses spa-
tial spectral estimation techniques to ex-
tract the character parameters of the spec-
trum. signal of the complex environment.
This step is equivalent to the reconstruc-
tion of the target stage.
- Basic Principle of DOA Estimation for :
The angle between the normal of the
matrix and the direction vector of the plane
wave is the Direction of arrival (DOA). The es-
timated DOA target provides N instantaneous
data: X (1) ... X (N), using an algorithm to
estimate the value of multiple DOA (θ) signals.
For signals generally distant from each other,
there is a difference in wave direction when
the same signal reaches different elements of
the matrix. This channel difference leads to a
phase difference between the elements of the
arrival matrix. Using the phase difference be-
tween the elements of the signal network, the
basic principle of the estimation of the DO.[6]
We choose in our study to working with
michrophones array.
Figure 4: Uniform Linear Array with Far Field Source
The first microphone M1 is chosen as the
reference microphone. The distance between
any microphone pair is constant, say d. The
distance to be travelled by sound waves from
a source to a microphone Mi with respect to
reference microphone M1 will be given by Eq.1
[7]:
τi = −(di /υ)sin(θ ) (1)
This equation indicates that the sound
wave incident on microphone Mi will be
timedelayed version of reference microphone.
In DOA algorithms we choose in our papier
to working with two algorithms: MUSIC
algorithm and ESPRIT Algorithm.
iii. MUSIC Algorithm
MUSIC Algorithm (MUltiple SIgnal Classi-
fication) is one of the most popular method of
The detection methods who use the fact that
signal eigenvalues are larger than the noise
eigenvalues.
MUSIC makes assumption that the
noise in each channel is uncorrelated mak-
ing correlation matrix diagonal. The inci-
dent signals are somewhat correlated creat-
ing non diagonal signal correlation matrix[7]:
Figure 5: M element antenna array with D arriving
signals
• Calculation of eigenvectors a eigenvalues
of the autocorrelation matrix[7]:
R xx = A ∗ Rss ∗ A H + σ2 ∗ I
were: A = [ a(θ1 ) a(θ2 )...a(θ D )] is a M*D
array steering matrix.
R xx = [s1 (k)s2 (k)....s D (k)] T
• R xx has D eigenvectors associated with sig-
nals and M âĂŞ D eigenvectors associated
with the noise.
• Construction of a family of vectors param-
eterized by the arrival angle with a theo-
retical state of relative phase imposed by
the geometry of the network. such that[7]:
VN = [V1 V2 ...VM− D ]
• Projection of this family of vectors in the
noise subspace and determining the val-
ues of the direction of arrival θ1 θ2 , , θ D for
which there is a relative minimum [8].
The e MUSIC Pseudospectrum is given as:
PMUSIC(θ ) = 1/abs(( a(θ )θ H VN VNH a(θ )
(2)
iv. ESPRIT Algorithm
ESPRIT (Estimation of signal parameters
via the rotational invariance technique) is also
a robust and efficient method for estimating
DOA. It is similar to the MUSIC method. But
it uses two tables in that the second element
of each pair is moved the same distance in the
same direction relative to the first element.[9]
3
 ∆0 is the element separation in terms of wave-
length. Other variations of ESPRIT include
beam-space ESPRIT, resolution-enhanced ES-
PRIT multiple invariance ESPRIT and higher
order ESPRIT.

III. Simulation and Discussion

At first, we implemented the code for several

Figure 6: Uniform Linear Array with Far Field Source
Let the array signals received by the two
arrays be denoted by x(t) and y(t) such that[10]:
arrival direction estimation techniques: MU-
SIC, ESPRIT and also Capon. MATLAB is used
to simulate these algorithms.

x (t) = As(t) + n x (t) (3)

i. With three different algorithms:
y(t) = Aθs(t) + ny (t) (4)
Three signals were used with a Direction of Ar-
• A is a Kx M matrix; where M is the num- rival equal to 20 ◦ , 60 ◦ and 110 ◦ , respectively.
ber of steering vectors produced by N ele- And SNR = 5dB, Number of snapshots = 1000
ments of the array. and Number of antennas = 10.
• n x (t) denotes the noise induced at the ele-
ments ofthe y arrays.
• ny (t) the noise induced at the elements of Type of algorithm Mean squared errator
x array MUSIC 0.0023
ESPRIT 0.0067
The numbers of directional sources M are
CAPON 0.0132
estimated using the Akaike information cri-
terion (AIC) and the minimum description
length (MOL).[b] Two matrices Ux and Uy are
formed which designate the M eigenvectors
corresponding to the largest eigenvalues of
the two-matrix correlation matricesR xx and Ryy
(matrix correlation matrices). The eigenvectors
of the following matrix 2M by 2M are obtained
and are designated by:
 
H
Ux
 
V=
 H  Ux Uy (5)
U
y

One eigenvector V is obtained its eignval-

ues λm , m=1,...,M can be computed.Now the
Figure 7: DOA of three signals using MUSIC algo-
DOA is given by :
rithm

ARG (λm )
θm = cos−1 { }, m = 1, . . . , M (6)
2π∆0

4
Figure 8: DOA of three signals using Capon algorithm Figure 10: DOA estimation by varying Number of Di-
rection of Arrival (3)
As can be seen, the CAPON beamformer is
able to identify the signals but the locations are
not represented by sharp peaks (Mean squared
errator = 0.0132). MUSIC and ESPRIT also
identify the three signals, but MUSIC is able to
represent locations with larger peaks.

ii. With a single algorithm (MUSIC) :

In this case we used the algorithm that gives
the most performance results (Music) but by
varying the Direction of Arrival.

Nbr of Direction Arrival Mean squared err

2 0.0010
3 0.0023 Figure 11: DOA estimation by varying Number of Di-
4 0.0024 rection of Arrival (4)
5 0.0121

Figure 9: DOA estimation by varying Number of Direc- Figure 12: DOA estimation by varying Number of Di-
tion of Arrival (2) rection of Arrival (5)

5
It is found that the MUSIC algorithm is able
to identify several signals with precision com-
pared to the other DOA algorithms, with five
sources found that the squared mean error is
still low (0.0121).
iii. With a single algorithm (MUSIC)
but in this case with different values of
Number of snapshots :
We change the Number of snapshots and
we leave the other parameters unchanged.
And also, we used 2 signals with a Direc-
tion of Arrival equal respectively: 30 ◦ and 80 ◦ .
Nbr of snapshots Mean squared errator
50 0.0753
600 0.0084
1000 0.0023
4000 0.0019
10000 9.3656e-04
This simulation shows the relationship between
the estimate of the direction of arrival and the
number of snapshots.With the increase in num-
ber of snapshots, DOA estimation accuracy
increases, but at the same time computational
load increases. So it has to be selected wisely.
IV. Conclusion:
The DOA estimate has a wide range of appli-
cations in the fields of communications, radar,
biomedicine, etc. This article proposes various
algorithms of the estimation of the DOA. The
additional MUSIC algorithm is simulated in de-
tail by modifying its various parameters using
MATLAB. In various DOA estimations based
on a spatial spectrum estimate, the MUSIC
method has a higher resolution, a moderate
amount of computation and a better robust-
ness of the matrix structure.
References
[1] Te-Won Lee ; M.S. Lewicki ; M. Girolami
; T.J. Sejnowski Blind Source Separation
Of More Sources Than Mixtures Using
6
Overcomplete Representations IEEE Sig-
nal Processing Letters,April 1999.
[2] J.-F. Cardoso, Blind source separation :
statistical principles in Proceedings of the
IEEE, vol. 9, no. pp. 2009âĂŞ2025,10 oct.
1998.
[3] Angeliki Alexion,Martin Haardt Smart
Antenna Technologies for Future Wireless
Systems: Trends and Challenges IEEE
communication Magazine October 2004.
[4] V Krishnaveni, PhD. T Kesavamurthy,
PhD. Aparna.B Beamforming for
Direction-of-Arrival (DOA) Estimation-A
Survey International Journal of Computer
Applications (0975 âĂŞ 8887) Volume 61âĂŞ
No.11 January 2013.
[5] Honghao Tang, Sven Nordebo, Pieternella
Cijvat DOA estimation based on MUSIC
algorithm Bachelor degree Institutionen fÃűr
Fysik och Elektroteknik 2014-05-16.
[6] N. A. Dheringe , Prof. B. N. Bansode Per-
formance Evaluation and Analysis of Di-
rection of Arrival Estimation Using MU-
SIC, TLS ESPRIT and Pro ESPRIT Algo-
rithms Maharashtra, India , June 2015.
[7] T.B. LAVATE,V.K. KOKATE, Dr. A. M.
SAPKAL Performance Analysis of MUSIC
and ESPRIT DOA Estimation algorithms
for adaptive array smart antenna in mo-
bile communication. Second International
Conference on Computer and Network Tech-
nology ,2010.
[8] AOUNALLAH Naceur and BOUZIANI
Merahi The use of high resolution algo-
rithms for angle of arrival estimation Re-
searchGate ,Algeria ,April 2012.
[9] Karan Sharma, Sandeep Santosh Review
on ESPRIT-Estimation of Signal Parame-
ters via Rotational Invariance Techniques
International Journal of Engineering Research
(ISSN : 2319-6890) Volume No.2, Issue No3,
pp : 243-252 .01 July 2013.
[10] Mohammad Ismat Kadirl , Md. Shadiul
Hoque., Saiful Islam, Direction of Arrival
Algorithms for Adaptive Beamforming in
Next Generation Wireless Systems Proceed-
ings of 11 th International Conference on Com-
puter and Information Technology ,Khulna,
BangladeshDecember, 2008.