Performance analysis and array design for wide-band beamformers

We study and analyze passive imaging arrays and apertures for their performance in the imaging of spatially incoherent source distributions. The concept of difference coarray is used to provide interesting insight into the aperture synthesis process using frequency diversity or wide-band imaging. We also exploit this understanding of wide-band operation to design imaging arrays, and illustrate our results through examples. The proposed methods are also applicable to imaging of coherent distributions of reflectors. (C) 1998 SPIE and IS&T. [S1017-9909(98)00304-3].