03/16/2023
By Danielle Fretwell

The Francis College of Engineering, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, invites you to attend a master’s thesis defense by Justin Reiter on “Analysis of a Spread Spectrum Digital Beamforming Receiver Architecture.”

Candidate Name: Justin Reiter
Degree: Master’s
Defense Date: Wednesday, March 29, 2023
Time: 3-4 p.m.
Location: This will be a virtual defense via Zoom. Those interested in attending should contact the student (justin_reiter@student.uml.edu) and committee advisor (jay_weitzen@uml.edu) at least 24 hours prior to the defense to request access to the meeting.

Advisor: Jay Weitzen, Department Chair and Head, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Massachusetts Lowell

Committee Members

  • Orlando Arias, Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Massachusetts Lowell
  • Pete Delos, Senior Principal Engineer, Aerospace and Defense, Analog Devices

Brief Abstract: Digital beamforming receiver architectures are attractive for phased array systems due to the flexibility and performance they provide as well as their ability to support multiple simultaneous beams. However, these advantages come at the expense of requiring an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) for every element in the array. As operational frequencies increase and element spacings decrease, it becomes challenging to physically fit an ADC in every channel and to manage the power that they dissipate in a small area. The spread spectrum digital beamforming (SSDBF) architecture offers a way around this challenge by

allowing the signals from multiple antenna elements to be code-multiplexed and processed by a single ADC. This work builds upon previous work demonstrating the feasibility of the SSDBF architecture to assess critical design parameters and their impact on the resulting system performance. A parametrized model of an SSDBF architecture from antenna elements to digital data bits was created in MATLAB and used to assess the effect of multiple factors such as timing errors and code bandwidth on the resulting beam patterns and the spurious free dynamic range (SFDR) of the receiver. These results are used to offer recommendations on the implementation of SSBDF architecture and identify applications where it is a potential solution.

All interested students and faculty members are invited to attend the online defense via remote access.