Aperiodic Vector Antenna Switching based Direction of Arrival Estimation for Noncircular Signals

A method for estimating direction of arrival and polarization parameters of non-circular signals based on the aperiodic vector antenna switching scheme is proposed. To use the non-circularity of the signal, the array output can be conjugate augmented, and the conjugate augmented covariance matrix can be obtained in the multiple receiving channel system. However, the complete array output cannot be directly obtained in the single receiving channel system. To solve this problem, an aperiodic vector antenna switching frame is proposed. In this frame, the antenna switching method for estimating the covariance matrix in the single polarized antenna array is first extended to the vector antenna situation. After that, a new vector antenna switching scheme is proposed to reconstruct the conjugate covariance matrix, and then the conjugate augmented covariance matrix is obtained. The new method is suitable for single polarized antenna arrays and can be applied to the second order difference-sum arrays via single receiving channel. Simulation results verify the effectiveness and accuracy of the proposed method.