Large Array Null Steering Using Compressed Sensing

In this letter, array null steering is formulated as a sparse recovery problem. In addition, a novel null steering scheme for large arrays by perturbing only a few elements is presented. To achieve this goal, compressed sensing (CS) is used to exploit the sparsity of the perturbed elements. The advantages of the proposed scheme are a significant reduction in hardware cost and lower power consumption, as well as less aging of the elements and faster response. Simulation results show that the CS-based method could be efficiently used to generate wide nulls using at least two elements. The interference rejection ratio achieved by the proposed method is 10–20 dB better than the existing solutions. The performance of different null generation methods in terms of peak-to-sidelobe ratio, pointing error, and beam-width is compared as well. The proposed algorithm is a prominent solution for the future 5G base stations, where a fast and low-cost beam shaping algorithm is required.