Self-reconfigurable implementation for a switched beam smart antenna

•Self-reconfigurable system for switched beam smart antenna.•The system can dynamically alter the beam pattern and the fixed-point format.•Interrupt-driven run-time reconfiguration for arithmetic overflow occurrences.•A dynamic management framework is introduced for swapping hardware configurations. We present a self-reconfigurable embedded system for a switched beam smart antenna that can steer the beam pattern into a desired direction, handle arithmetic overflow, and respond to user-specified constraints on accuracy and resources. The main component (adaptive beamforming) is implemented as a fully customized hardware in fixed-point arithmetic. By varying the numerical formats and desired beam patterns, we generate a set of hardware configurations, which can then be selected at run-time via a dynamic manager implemented in software. The self-reconfigurable embedded system is implemented and tested on a Programmable System-on-Chip (PSoC). Results are presented in terms of resources, accuracy, and run-time hardware adaptation. This work illustrates the benefits of run-time reconfiguration technology on PSoCs for the implementation of switched-beam smart antennas.