English

A Self-Calibrating SDR for High Fidelity Beam- and Null-forming Arrays

Signal Processing 2026-04-06 v1

Abstract

Null forming is increasingly essential in modern wireless systems for spectrum-sharing, anti-jamming, and covert communications in contested and congested environments. Achieving deep nulls, however, is far more demanding than conventional beam steering: nulls are intrinsically narrow, and even small phase, timing, or gain mismatches across RF chains can significantly degrade suppression. This work develops and validates a self-calibrating SDR architecture tailored for high-fidelity null forming using a compact reference transmitter directionally coupled to the antenna feeds. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach through simulation and experimental measurements on an SDR platform operating from 3.0 to 3.5GHz, a band of growing importance for Department of Defense spectrum-sharing initiatives.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2604.02498,
  title  = {A Self-Calibrating SDR for High Fidelity Beam- and Null-forming Arrays},
  author = {Yongjun Kim and Aditya Dhananjay and Sundeep Rangan and Sachin Shetty and C. Nicolas Barati and Michael Zappe and Kimberly Gold and Junil Choi},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.02498},
  year   = {2026}
}