Optimal design of linear array of sensors

The authors address the issue of design of linear arrays of sensors with application to high-resolution direction-of-arrival (DOA) algorithms, and present the D-optimality based design criterion (DOBC). The design technique employs certain prior information in the cases of low-angle tracking and where targets are close to each other, and provides an array which minimizes the joint estimation error in angles of arrival. Two examples are given, and both theoretical analysis and computer simulation are carried out, showing that significant improvement in performance can be achieved with this design over the conventional uniform arrays and a class of minimum redundancy (MR) arrays