Low-cost antenna array via antenna switching for high resolution 2-D DOA estimation

This paper presents a method of synthesizing covariance matrix elements of array input signal for high resolution 2-D Direction-Of-Arrival (DOA) estimation via antenna (sensor) switching. Antenna array generally has the same number of array elements and receiver modules which often leads large receiver hardware cost. Two of the authors have already studied a way of antenna switching to reduce receiver cost, but it can be applied only for periodic incident signals like sinusoid. In this paper, we propose a simple method of DOA estimation from sparse data by synthesizing covariance matrix elements of array input signal via antenna switching, which can also be applied to DOA estimation of antiperiodic incident signals. Performance of the proposed approach is evaluated in detail through some computer simulation.