Optimization of the antenna array geometry based on a Bayesian DOA estimation criterion

In this paper, we address the problem of the sensor placement for estimating the direction of a narrow-band source, randomly located in the far-field of a planar antenna array. Estimation performance is evaluated by means of the expectation of the conditional Cramer Rao bound (ECRB), which depends on the prior probabilistic distribution of the DOA angles. We study the particular, but practical, case where the azimuth angle is uniformly distributed. Surprisingly, it turns out that the optimal arrays are not isotropic, i.e. they do not have the same accuracy in all possible look directions. In fact, optimal arrays computed here increase performance by about 10% compared to optimal isotropic arrays computed in a previous work.