High-resolution 3-D direction-of-arrival determination for urban mobile radio

The in-depth knowledge of the mobile radio channel is particularly important for radio communication modeling and advanced technology system design. We propose an accurate method to determine jointly the azimuth and elevation angle and the delay of waves incoming at the receiver. The method is applied to measurements of the complex impulse response of the mobile radio channel, performed on a planar array placed on a mobile in an urban cellular environment. The directions-of-arrival (DOA) were obtained by the means of a direction finding algorithm-two-dimensional (2-D) unitary ESPRIT. Two-dimensional spatial smoothing as an extension of ordinary spatial smoothing is utilized to decorrelate coherent waves. The application of 2-D unitary ESPRIT increases the angular resolution over conventional Fourier analysis or the scattering function by an order of magnitude and overcomes difficulties due to secondary lobes. The time delay is determined from wideband channel sounder measurements. The results confirm some assumptions on propagation mechanisms: (1) the wave-guiding property of streets (canyon effect), which is especially pronounced for long-delayed paths; (2) the variation of the number of incoming waves with their excess delay-the larger the excess delay, the lower the number of paths comprising an echo in the power delay profile; (3) if a single path remains, the privileged DOA is the direction of the street; (4) the exponential part of the power delay profile due to scatterers all around the receiver; and (5) the elevation dependence or the impinging power. In the tested receiver locations, paths with elevations between 0° and 40° dominate, containing about 90% of the received power