Full Pass-band Signal Combining Technique for A Randomly Distributed Sensor Array

The traditional multi-antenna signal combining technique (MSC) is very useful which, however, leads to a very poor efficiency as well as a big waste of processing resources inevitably since more sets of devices are required when the number of the target signal increases. In order to overcome the weaknesses of the traditional MSC, the full pass-band multi antenna signal combining (FPMSC) technique, which realizes all combining processes in frequency domain and aims to combine many independent signals by using a single set of device under the multi-antenna condition, is proposed. An universal processing structure for the FPMSC is developed, which benefits the parallelization. Based on this processing structure, an effective algorithm multi-signal estimation and compensation algorithm of the time-delay and phase difference based on frequency domain combining all independent signals in a full pass-band is presented. The algorithm regards all signals as one and treats each signal coequally on condition that the spectrum of each signal is not superimposed on the others. In this algorithm, since the linear phase difference between two spectrums on different antennas is considered, and the algorithm is named frequency domain multi-antenna combining based on linear phase (FDMCLP). We compare the FD-MCLP algorithm with the frequency component multi-antenna combining (FRMC) algorithm. Simulation results show that the FD-MCLP algorithm is better than the FRMC algorithm due to the characteristic of the linear phase difference, and could enhance the signal-to-noise ratio substantially. The other advantage of the algorithm is that all independent signals could be combined at the same time.