FPGA implementation of robust Capon beamformer

The Capon Beamforming algorithm is an optimal spatial filtering algorithm used in various signal processing applications where excellent interference rejection performance is required, such as Radar and Sonar systems, Smart Antenna systems for wireless communications. Its lack of robustness, however, means that it is vulnerable to array calibration errors and other model errors. To overcome this problem, numerous robust Capon Beamforming algorithms have been proposed, which are much more promising for practical applications. In this paper, an FPGA implementation of a robust Capon Beamforming algorithm is investigated and presented. This realization takes an array output with 4 channels, computes the complex-valued adaptive weight vectors for beamforming with an 18 bit fixed-point representation and runs at a 100 MHz clock on Xilinx V4 FPGA. This work will be applied in our medical imaging project for breast cancer detection.