Direction-of-Arrival Estimation of Coherent Sources with Leaky-Wave Antennas using Spatially Filtered Interpolation

Abstract

International audienceWith their frequency-beam scanning behavior, leaky-wave antennas (LWAs) are promisingsolutions to develop accurate and cost-effective direction-of-arrival (DoA) estimationsystems. However, DoA estimators such as MUSIC face challenges with coherent sourcesdue to the non-Vandermonde LWA steering matrix. Leveraging the unique radiation propertiesof LWAs, this paper first divides the entire field of view into several angular sectors,and then introduces a robust and accurate sectorized spatially-filtered interpolation (SFI)method to transform the LWA steering matrix into a Vandermonde matrix in each sectorwhile minimizing the issue of out-of-sector interference. The proposed method allowsthus the estimation of DoAs of coherent sources with LWAs. The simulation results showthat the DoAs of multiple coherent sources across the entire field-of-view, regardless theirangular sector, can be correctly estimated. The performance of the proposed method isshown be close to the Cramér-Rao Bound