Estimation of direction of arrival under multipath-induced angular spread environment

Abstract

Direction of arrival estimation is an interesting and important topic in array signal processing. In this thesis, new signal source modeling and estimation technique to obtain direction of arrival with array sensors are considered. The direction of a signal source has usually been assumed to be a point. This point source assumption, however, is invalid in some applications due to real surroundings and estimation techniques based upon the point source assumption would result in poor performance. Signal source modeling problem and estimation techniques for such cases are proposed and analyzed. We consider a signal model in which the source signals impinge on an array of sensors over a spread of angles. Such a scenario arises, for example, in mobile telecommunications where the angular spread is caused by multipath from a large number of scatterers located near the sources. Direction of arrival algorithm based on the maximum likelihood techniques are considered under the proposed multipath model and performance comparison with a technique under the point source assumption is shown.