Enabling Fast Steering of Arbitrary Beams with Phased Arrays

Phased array-based systems must support the formation of beams with precise lobes and nulls in specific locations to operate effectively in complex environments with multiple users, objects, and interferers. Additionally, the ability to steer these non-conventional beam configurations rapidly is highly desirable. Current methods for fast beam steering are either constrained by the limited memory capacity of RF front-ends or restricted to fast steering of beams with sinc-shaped patterns. In this work, we introduce an approach for enabling the rapid steering of arbitrary beams every 200 ns. Our method involves defining a desired beam shape in the broadside direction and steering it through a transformation process. Measurements of spatial and temporal variations of beamforming gain using a $16 \times 16$ element phased array at $28 \mathbf{~ G H z}$ validate the effectiveness of this technique. The measured beam shapes include (1) a beam with a null 26° to the left of the main lobe (2) a multi-armed beam with three lobes at $-18^{\circ}, 0^{\circ}$ and +28° and (3) a 40°-wide flat-topped beam.