Low-complexity angle of arrival estimation of wideband signals using small arrays

When the signal to noise ratio is relatively high, the angle of arrival of the strongest signal can be estimated with a very simple method and a small 3D sensor array. The differences in the arrival times of the wideband signal received by spatially separated sensors are estimated using the polarity coincidence correlation. These time differences, i.e. time delays, determine the angle of arrival. In this paper the effects of quantization of the time delays are studied. It is found out that this simple method gives comparable performance to the conventional direct correlation based methods in the case of a relatively high signal to noise ratio