Adaptive tensorial beamformer based on electromagnetic vector-sensor arrays with coherent interferences

An adaptive beamforming scheme based on vector-sensor arrays is implemented using two different matrix contractions of the 4th order covariance tensor. This tensorial beamformer has a two-stage structure, effectively combining the Bartlett and the minimum-variance-distortionless-response beamformers together. At the first stage, it involves an inherent multi-dimensional data smoothing operation which is capable of suppressing coherent interferences; at the second stage, the fixed Bartlett beamformer provides further enhancement to its robustness against steering vector mismatch errors, such as direction of arrival estimation and element position errors. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithms is verified by numerical simulations.