Patent ID: 7415372

Claim:
A method for improving noise discrimination in a system having a plurality of sensors each configured to generate an input signal representable by an input vector having a phase component and a magnitude component, the plurality of sensors arranged to have an on-axis direction, the method comprising: generating an input electrical signal from each of the plurality of sensors; processing the input electrical signals from the plurality of sensors, said processing including: using the input electrical signals from a first pair of sensors to obtain a coarse vector phase difference corresponding to a coarse measurement of an angle of arrival of a signal input source relative to the on-axis direction; using the input electrical signals from a second pair of sensors to obtain a fine vector phase difference corresponding to a fine measurement of the angle of arrival of the signal input source; generating an attenuation factor as a function of the coarse and fine vector phase differences; combining the input vectors corresponding the second pair of sensors to obtain an output vector; attenuating the output vector by the attenuation factor; generating an output electrical signal based on the attenuated output vector; and applying sensitivity matching to accommodate device and/or signal mismatch in the system.