What is the reason for choosing a rectangular pulse as an incoming signal?

Conventional and Adaptive Beamformers

In this documentation article for conventional and adaptive beamformers, the incoming received signal has been modeled as a rectangular pulse. Why are we specifically using a rectangular pulse and not something else, like say a sine wave?

Thanks.

Answer 1

[Honglei Chen]

There is no particular reason. Certainly the sine wave will work if the focus is just on the beamforming algorithm itself. In defense radar systems, pulses are more prevalent so the example used the pulse. Note that a rectangular pulse at baseband is really just a sinusoid at carrier controlled by an on-off switch.

HTH