Improving Elevation Estimation Accuracy in DOA Estimation: How Planar Arrays Can Be Modified into 3-D Configuration

Hiroki MORIYA
Koichi ICHIGE
Hiroyuki ARAI
Takahiro HAYASHI
Hiromi MATSUNO
Masayuki NAKANO

Publication
IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Fundamentals of Electronics, Communications and Computer Sciences   Vol.E95-A    No.10    pp.1667-1675
Publication Date: 2012/10/01
Online ISSN: 1745-1337
DOI: 10.1587/transfun.E95.A.1667
Print ISSN: 0916-8508
Type of Manuscript: Special Section PAPER (Special Section on Advances in Adaptive Signal Processing and Applications)
Category: DOA
Keyword: 
direction of arrival estimation,  array signal processing,  sensor arrays,  antenna arrays,  

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Summary: 
This paper presents a simple 3-D array configuration for high-resolution 2-D Direction-Of-Arrival (DOA) estimation. Planar array structures like Uniform Rectangular Array (URA) or Uniform Circular Array (UCA) often well estimate azimuth angle but cannot well estimate elevation angle because of short antenna aperture in elevation direction. One may put more number of array elements to improve elevation angle estimation accuracy, however it will require very large hardware and software cost. This paper presents a simple 3-D array structure for high-resolution 2-D DOA estimation only by modifying the height of some array elements in a planar array. Based on the analysis of Cramer-Rao Lower Bound (CRLB) formulation and its dependency on the height of array elements, we develop a simple 3-D array structure which improves elevation angle estimation accuracy while preserving azimuth angle estimation accuracy.