Extending the bandwidth of an acoustic beamforming array using phase unwrapping and array interpolation.

A method is presented to suppress grating lobes in beamforming using phase unwrapping and array interpolation. When the phase of each cross spectrum is successfully unwrapped, the magnitude and phase of the cross spectral matrix may be interpolated; for cases where these quantities vary smoothly, interpolation is straightforward, even above the spatial Nyquist frequency. Two applications are presented: localization of a broadband source and characterization of a source with frequency-dependent location. In both cases, grating lobes are suppressed and the source is localized at frequencies up to at least 8 times the spatial Nyquist frequency.