Direction of Arrival Estimation in Time Modulated Linear Arrays With Unidirectional Phase Center Motion

A novel approach for estimating the direction of arrivals (DOAs) in time modulated linear arrays (TMLAs) with unidirectional phase center motion (UPCM) scheme is proposed in this paper. Based on the fact that the main beams of the patterns at different sidebands can be directed at different directions, the corresponding received signals can be used to compose a received data space. Thus, the spatial locations of the far-field sources can be estimated by using multiple signal classification (MUSIC) algorithm. Simulation results of the DOA estimation in an 8-element TMLA with the UPCM scheme validate the proposed approach, where the performance such as the accuracy and resolution of the DOA estimation is obtained through Monte-Carlo simulations. As compared to the DOA estimation based on conventional uniform linear arrays (ULAs), a much better resolution performance is obtained.