A Comparison of Various High Resolution Spectral Estimation Techniques in Radio Direction Finding

Abstract

Due to the progress in the signal processing hardware, high resolution spectral estimation algorithms now become applicable in practical systems. One favour application is radio direction finding (DF) used for navigation and electronic reconnaissance. Compared with classical DF techniques the advantage of the high resolution methods is their better resolution capability in interference fields and the ability to use nearly every possible antenna array geometry. Nevertheless, the better resolution capability may decrease in practice due to model and DF system errors. In this paper we will compare three high resolution spectral estimation techniques, namely the MUSIC (MUltiple SIgnal Classification), the Minimum-Norm and the Capon algorithm. As a reference, the classical Fourier algorithm is also treated. The results show, that two algorithms, MUSIC and Fourier, are applicable in practice. Furthermore a simple method to reduce the computational effort of calculating the angle spectrum is given, which has to be calculated for all four methods.