Super-Resolution Direction-of-Arrival Estimation based on Multiplicative Array Processing

Abstract

In radar, sonar and wireless communications, there is a critical need for estimating the direction-of-arrival (DoA) of signals or sources. DoA angles of signals are estimated by processing the measurements from spatially distributed sensor arrays. In all these cases, conventional processing involves using linear processing to combine the measurements from the sensor elements of the spatial array. The DoA angular resolution is determined by the size of the spatial array. In this study, a multiplicative processing technique known as multiplicative array processing (MAP) is proposed to achieve fine angular resolution by using much smaller array sizes. Multiplicative processing of array measurements has the potential to achieve super-resolution capability where the effective resolution is commensurate with significantly larger array sizes. In this study, both simulations and experimental results are used to verify and validate the proposed multiplicative processing technique. Simulations indicate that for moderate to high signal-to-noise ratios, MAP performs as well as linear processing methods with much larger array sizes. MAP is applied to experimental measurements to verify and validate the effectiveness of the proposed technique with field data.