English

A Unified Dual Framework for Sparse-Array Near-Field Beam Focusing With Spatial Interference Suppression

Information Theory 2026-07-12 v1

Abstract

We study sparse-array near-field beam focusing with spatial interference suppression, a problem arising in coherent satellite formations and other distributed non-terrestrial arrays. State-of-the-art designs solve it numerically through second-order cone programming (SOCP) with cutting-plane refinement, yet the achievable signal-to-interference ratio (SIR) and its link to classical adaptive beamforming have remained without an analytical characterization. We supply this characterization via a Lagrangian-dual analysis, obtaining three results. First, every optimal beamformer is a generalized matched filter against an effective spatial covariance induced by an optimal dual measure; this closed form recovers MVDR, LCMV, and SOCP-based focusing as special cases. Second, the dual measure has finite support of cardinality at most M2M^2 in general, sharpening to MM for uniform linear arrays (MM the number of array elements), which yields a finite-dimensional convergence certificate for cutting-plane methods. Third, a closed-form upper bound on the mean-SIR admits an asymptotic logarithmic scaling law in MM under near-collinear geometry, identifying array order, rather than the optimization algorithm, as the dominant performance factor. A Riemannian conjugate-gradient algorithm on the unit-torus manifold is developed for practical constant-modulus beamforming, and numerical results demonstrate that it closely approaches the derived performance limit.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2607.10764,
  title  = {A Unified Dual Framework for Sparse-Array Near-Field Beam Focusing With Spatial Interference Suppression},
  author = {Changhao He and Xiaojuan Zhang and Francois Chin Po Shin},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2607.10764},
  year   = {2026}
}