Patent ID: 8604976

Claim:
In a beamforming apparatus for a phased array antenna, a method for beamforming in a phased array antenna having a total aperture, comprising: receiving a specified beam steering vector (BSV); determining a number of concentric sub-apertures based upon a beam spoiling vector associated with said BSV; dividing the total aperture into the determined number of concentric sub-apertures; computing a spoiled BSV for at least one of two orthogonal co-planar dimensions perpendicular to the direction of propagation of a transmit wavefront based on the BSV; applying the spoiled BSV in divergent directions for each sub-aperture by: for each element i in each of said sub-apertures, computing a beam steering phase coefficient, where said beam steering phase coefficient is determined by the equation Φ i = 2 ⁢ ⁢ π λ ⁢ ( x i ⁢ u spoil + y i ⁢ v spoil ) + 2 ⁢ ⁢ π λ ⁢ ( x i ⁢ U steer + y i ⁢ V steer ) wherein (x i , y i ) denote the location of element i and (u spoil , v spoil ) denote the spoiled BSV in sine space coordinates; and adjusting the phase of each element in said array by said respective beam steering phase coefficients to spoil the transmit beam; wherein said spoiling compensates for at least one of platform motion and local clutter.