Direction of arrival estimation for uniform circular array based on fourth-order cumulants in the presence of unknown mutual coupling

Abstract

A direction of arrival (DOA) estimation algorithm in the presence of an unknown mutual coupling is presented for a uniform circular array. This algorithm is based on the fourth-order cumulants, and the DOA of signal sources can be accurately estimated without the need of any calibration source since the coupling is blindly compensated by the inherent mechanism of the proposed method. Because of the use of higher-order statistics, the number of sources that can be coped with may be larger than the number of sensors in the array, and the algorithm is insensitive to Gaussian noise. Comparing with existing calibration methods which use iterative approaches, this algorithm is computationally less expensive since it uses only a one-dimensional search. Validation and performance are illustrated by simulations. © The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2008.