Implementation of direction-of-arrival estimator on software defined radio platform

Direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation is very useful in many positioning applications and has been well studied and verified via computer simulation. The main contribution of this work is to design and implement a real-time DOA estimator on a software defined radio (SDR) platform. Because the RF receivers on the SDR platform are phase incoherent, this design requires a phase calibration scheme to avoid estimation errors due to phase differences between RF receivers. The DOA estimator is tested in microwave anechoic chamber. Experimental measurements show that the implemented DOA estimator can accurately estimate the directions of impinging signals.