Advanced Techniques for Array Processing

Array processing technology is expected to be a key element in communication systems designed for the crowded and hostile environment of the future battlefield. While advanced array processing techniques have been under development for some time, their practical use has been very limited. This project addressed some of the issues which need to be resolved for a successful transition of these promising techniques from theory into practice. The main problem which was studied was that of finding the directions of multiple co- channel transmitters from measurements collected by an antenna array. Two key issues related to high-resolution direction finding were addressed effects of system calibration errors, and effects of correlation between the received signals due to multipath propagation. A number of useful theoretical performance analysis results were derived, and computationally efficient direction estimation algorithms were developed. These results include self-calibration techniques for antenna arrays, sensitivity analysis for high-resolution direction finding, extensions of the root-MUSIC algorithm to arbitrary arrays and to arrays with polarization diversity, and new techniques for direction finding in the presence of multipath based on array interpolation.