beamform_delay_sum — RANGEDOPPLER beamform op

Data kinds: beatcubesignal

Call: import rangedoppler; rangedoppler.beamform_delay_sum(cube, wavelength_m=0.0038934, element_spacing_m=None, angles_deg=None, range_bin=None, doppler_bin=None, normalize=False) (or opsrangedoppler.get("beamform_delay_sum"))

Usage

Delay-and-sum (Bartlett) angle spectrum for one range-Doppler cell.

Takes the per-antenna complex value at a single range-Doppler cell — by

default the strongest one — and for each steering angle removes the expected

inter-element phase and sums:

`P(theta) = |sum_k conj(exp(1j*2*pi*d*k*sin(theta)/lambda)) * x_k|^2`

which peaks at the true arrival angle with value `(N_a * |a|)^2`: the

aperture gives `N_a in amplitude, N_a^2` in power. That is the exact

ground truth the tests pin. Measured with 8 elements: the peak power is

bit-exactly `(N_a*N_c*N_s)^2 = 268435456` (relative error 0.0), and

sweeping the true angle from -80 to +80 degrees in 5-degree steps (33 cases)

the reported angle matches the truth with a maximum error of 0.0 degrees.

The steering grid defaults to `arange(-90, 90.5, 1.0). normalize=True`

divides by `N_a^2 * N_c^2 * N_s^2` so that a unit-amplitude bin-centred

target peaks at 1.0.

Returns a 1-D float64 array of powers, one per grid angle — a plain signal,

so :mod:dsp's `find_peaks and :mod:funct1d`'s smoothing apply to it.

Use :func:beamform_doa if you want the angles themselves.

*range_bin* is a plain `0..N_s-1` index; *doppler_bin* is the signed

velocity bin, the same convention :func:range_doppler_peaks reports, so a

detection can be handed straight back in. Both or neither — half a cell

address raises rather than quietly beamforming the strongest cell instead.

Raises `ValueError`: no aperture — either a single element, or many

elements packed into under ~0.28 wavelengths. In both cases the spectrum is

flat to within float noise and `argmax` returns the first grid angle, i.e.

a confident report of -90 degrees that is pure tie-breaking (measured: 8

elements at 1e-12 m spacing gave a peak-to-trough spread of exactly 0.0 and

reported -90.0). Also: an all-zero cube or an all-zero selected cell; only

one of *range_bin* / *doppler_bin*; an out-of-bounds bin index; an angle grid

outside `[-90, 90]`; an FFT that overflows to NaN; plus the usual cube and

scalar refusals.

Detailed usage guide

fmcw_range_doppler family guide

References (sample data, literature)

• Sample-data catalog (download URLs / licences) — 2-D uses skimage.data (BSD/public domain) plus synthetic images; 3-D lists download URLs for real data sources (Stanford, PDS, …).

• Operator provenance and references — the sources of the research/methods this op family came from.

• The canonical algorithm (author, year) and its uses are named in the family usage guide above.

Runnable examples (verified samples that actually call this op)

fmcw_range_dopplerpy -3.11 examples/fmcw_range_doppler.py

Ops the type connects to (they accept signal as input)

Same category (beamform)

beamform_doa


*Provenance: rangedoppler.py — RANGEDOPPLER operator registry. This per-op note is generated by tools/opdocs.py md (do not hand-edit).*

© 2026 Kazufumi Furuse — Fullseye operator documentation. Licensed under Apache-2.0.