DOA Estimation Using Multiple Antenna Arrays

This paper presents a new method for DOA estimation using multiple distributed antenna arrays. Unlike conventional methods that process covariance matrix at each array, the proposed method is based on cross-correlation matrix between two arrays. This method does not require the beamforming step in order to associate different DOAs from different antenna arrays. More importantly, this method, by exploiting the diversity in signal time delay, can break the limitation on the degrees of freedom imposed by antenna element number, even with conventional filled array. Simulation results are shown to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.