An efficient algorithm for direction finding against unknown mutual coupling

In this paper, an algorithm of direction finding is proposed in the presence of unknown mutual coupling. The preliminary direction of arrival (DOA) is estimated using the whole array for high resolution. Further refinement can then be conducted by estimating the angularly dependent coefficients (ADCs) with the subspace theory. The mutual coupling coefficients are finally determined by solving the least squares problem with all of the ADCs utilized without discarding any. Simulation results show that the proposed method can achieve better performance at a low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) with a small-sized array and is more robust, compared with the similar processes employing the initial DOA estimation and further improvement iteratively.