This paper presents a novel narrow-band adaptive beamformer with the genera
lized sidelobe canceller (GSC) as the underlying structure. The new beamfor
mer employs a wavelet-based approach for the design of the blocking matrix
of the GSC, which is now constituted by a set of regular M-band wavelet fil
ters. Such a construction of the blocking matrix can not only block the des
ired signals from the lower path as required provided the wavelet filters h
ave sufficiently high regularity, but it also encompasses the widely used o
ne with ones and minus ones along the diagonals as a special case. In addit
ion, it possesses two advantageous features. First, the eigenvalue spreads
of the covariance matrices of the blocking matrix outputs, as demonstrated
in various scenarios, are decreased as compared with those of previous appr
oaches. Since the popular least-mean squares (LMS) algorithm has been notor
ious for its slow convergence rate, the reduction of the eigenvalue spreads
can, in general, accelerate the convergence speed of the succeeding LMS al
gorithm. Second, the new beamformer belongs to a specific type of partially
adaptive beamformers, wherein only a portion of the available degree of fr
eedom is utilized in the adaptive processing. As such, the overall computat
ional complexity is substantially reduced when compared to previous works.
The issues of choosing the parameters involved for superior performance are
also addressed. Simulation results are furnished as well to justify this n
ew approach.