Patent ID: 8155927

Claim:
A device for improving noise discrimination, comprising: first and second pairs of sensors arranged to have an on-axis direction, each sensor configured to generate an input signal representable by an input vector having a phase component and a magnitude component; and at least one circuit adapted to: generate from the first pair of sensors 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; generate from the second pair of sensors a fine vector phase difference corresponding to a fine measurement of the angle of arrival of the signal input source; generate an attenuation factor as a function of the coarse and fine vector phase differences; combine input vectors representing input signals from each sensor of the second pair of sensors to obtain an output vector; attenuate the output vector by the attenuation factor; generate an output electrical signal based on the attenuated output vector; and apply sensitivity matching to accommodate device and/or signal mismatch in the system.