Beam steering

Antennas
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Common types Dipole Fractal Loop Satellite dish Television Whip
Components Balun Block upconverter Coaxial cable Counterpoise (ground system) Feed Feed line Low-noise block downconverter Passive radiator Receiver Rotator Stub Transmitter Tuner Twin-lead
Systems Antenna farm Amateur radio Cellular network Hotspot Municipal wireless network Radio Radio masts and towers Wi-Fi Wireless
Safety and regulation Mobile phone radiation and health Wireless electronic devices and health International Telecommunication Union (Radio Regulations) World Radiocommunication Conference
Radiation sources / regions Boresight Focal cloud Ground plane Main lobe Near and far field Side lobe Vertical plane
Characteristics Array gain Directivity Efficiency Electrical length Equivalent radius Factor Friis transmission equation Gain Height Radiation pattern Radiation resistance Radio propagation Radio spectrum Signal-to-noise ratio Spurious emission
Techniques Beam steering Beam tilt Beamforming Bell Laboratories Layered Space-Time (BLAST) Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) Reconfiguration Spread spectrum Wideband Space Division Multiple Access (WSDMA)

Beam steering (also spelled beamsteering or beam-steering) is about changing the direction of the main lobe of a radiation pattern.

In radio systems, beam steering may be accomplished by switching the antenna elements or by changing the relative phases of the RF signals driving the elements.

In acoustics, beam steering is used to direct the audio from loudspeakers to a specific location in the listening area. This is done by changing the magnitude and phase of two or more loudspeakers installed in a column where the combined sound is added and cancelled at the required position. Commercially, this type of loudspeaker arrangement is known as a line array. This technique has been around for many years but since the emergence of modern DSP (Digital Signal Processing) technology there are now many commercially available products on the market. Beam Steering and Directivity Control using DSP was pioneered in the early 1990s by Duran Audio who launched a technology called DDC (Digital Directivity Control).

In optical systems, beam steering may be accomplished by changing the refractive index of the medium through which the beam is transmitted or by the use of mirrors, prisms, lenses, or rotating diffraction gratings. Examples of optical beam steering approaches include mechanical mirror-based gimbals or beam-director units, galvanometer mechanisms that rotate mirrors, Risley prisms, phased-array optics, and microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) using micro-mirrors.

Source: from Federal Standard 1037C

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Beam steering

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