A study of the effects of mutual coupling on the direction-finding performance of a linear array using the methods of moments

Summary form only given, as follows. Modeling a linear array as a set of uniformly positioned identical dipole antennas, and signals as coherent and nonrandom narrowband plane waves, the method of moments is applied to study the effects of mutual coupling on the direction-finding performance of the forward-backward linear prediction (FBLP) method. Galerkin´s method is first applied to produce the voltage induced on the dipole loads by the assumed signals. Simulations show that when these voltages containing the effects of mutual coupling are used for processing, FBLP is incapable of extracting the directions of arrival with acceptable accuracy. A matrix which characterizes the mutual coupling among the dipoles is thus sought by again using Galerkin´s method, and the outputs which would exist if mutual coupling were absent are than extracted from the sensor outputs. When these extracted data are used for processing, a significant improvement in the performance of PBLP is observed.<>