Array errors active calibration algorithm and its improvement

The combined effects of mutual coupling, gain and phase errors, and sensor position errors have great negative impact on the direction-finding performance of the MUSIC algorithm. This paper investigates the calibration of the array errors induced by the three errors. Based on the array errors calibration algorithm (algorithm 1) presented by See, two improved array error-calibrating algorithms are presented. One (algorithm 2) uses the sparseness of mutual coupling matrix, and the other (algorithm 3) utilizes more special structures of mutual coupling matrix. Although the three algorithms have the same computation mode and theoretical framework, the latter two algorithms have much higher precision than the former one, as more properties of mutual coupling matrix are utilized in the two algorithms, and if the array manifold is uniform linear array or uniform circular array, algorithm 3 could have more obvious advantages. On the other hand, the three algorithms can be generalized to the situation when the calibration source azimuths have deviations. The three extended algorithms can not only calibrate the array errors, but also offset the deviations of calibration source azimuths simultaneously. Finally, the performances of the three algorithms are compared both in the absence and presence of the deviations of calibration source azimuths. Many simulation experiments demonstrate that the estimation precision of array errors can be obviously improved if more properties of mutual coupling matrix are effectively used.