Bearing estimations with mutual coupling present

Estimating angles of arrival of radiation sources using an antenna array with mutual coupling between elements is investigated. The presence of mutual coupling distorts phase vectors of radiation sources and the eigenstructure of the covariance matrix. Two approaches are proposed to counteract that distortion so that eigenstructure methods can perform well. The method described first eliminates the distortion of the signal component of the the covariance matrix and then applies spatial smoothing to decorrelate the coherence between sources. Computers simulation results show that this method successfully counteracts mutual coupling