Investigation of Direction-of-Arrival Estimation using Uniform Linear Arrays with Different Antenna Separations and Array Apertures

摘要

Direction-of arrival (DOA) estimation is one of the most popular applications in array signal processing. Various algorithms such as MUSIC, ESPIRT [1] and matrix pencil method (MPM) [2] have been developed. In most studies, however, the inter-element separation of the array is set to be 0.5λ, which is the upper limit that avoids grating lobe. The problem of how the inter-element separations (Δ)affect the accuracies of DOA algorithms has not been well addressed. In view of this, DOA estimations using MPM with (1) uniform linear array (ULA) with different inter-element separation within a fixed aperture and (2) ULA with the same number of elements but different aperture are studied. The results show that the performance of MPM does vary under different array configuration. Such findings are important for the design of compact array for DOA applications.