Angular CMA: A modified Constant Modulus Algorithm providing steering angle updates

Abstract

Conventional blind beamforming algorithms have no direct notion of the physical Direction of Arrival angle of an impinging signal. These blind adaptive algorithms operate by adjusting the complex steering vector in the case of changing signal conditions and directions. This paper presents Angular CMA, a blind beamforming method that calculates steering angle updates (instead of weight vector updates) to keep track of the desired signal. Angular CMA and its respective steering angle updates are particularly useful in the context of mixed-signal hierarchical arrays as means to find and distribute steering parameters. Simulations of Angular CMA show promising convergence behaviour, while having a lower complexity than alternative methods (e.g., MUSIC)