An apparatus and associated method are disclosed which form a multiple
beam forming network using time division multiplexing. Instead of having
several parallel sets of beam forming network hardware running at a given
sampling clock rate, a simpler, single piece of hardware is run at a
faster rate equal to the given sampling clock rate times the number of
beams to be formed. Each sample received from each element is time
division multiplexed into a bit stream, one for each beam. These time
division multiplex element samples are weighted to apply the desired
phase shift/time delay per element. Each weighted resultant is delayed in
a cascade delay pipeline and then combined with the cascade combiner to
form a beam at a given time division instant. This process is repeated
for the next set of time division multiplexed samples and weights from
each element of the array at a given time to form the next beam. The
process is repeated for all beams until the sampling time interval ends.