Abstract: A serial phase shift beamformer characterized by a charge transfer device for progressive clocked transfer of quadrature component analog samples of the scanned outputs of a multiplicity of transducer elements in a curved array. Weighting resistors effect scaling of the analog samples during parallel readout of X and Y component samples prior to summation of like components and derivation of the square root of the sum of the squares of the X and Y summations to provide formed beam amplitude signals.

Abstract: A digital beamformer for use with a cylindrical sonar array effects sequeal quadrature pair sampling of the outputs of M array elements used to form each beam, the resulting X and Y samples being digitized and fed alternatively to two serial-in, parallel out shift registers having M stages. M shading modules are responsive to the digitized element output samples in the corresponding stages of the two shift registers to alternately provide M shaded X and Y outputs. A multiple layer digital adder tree sums pairs of adjacent shaded X outputs and adjacent shaded Y outputs to provide the final beamformer output.