Computationally Efficient DOA and Polarization Estimation of Coherent Sources with Linear Electromagnetic Vector-Sensor Array

This paper studies the problem of direction finding and polarization estimation of coherent sources using a uniform linear electromagnetic vector-sensor (EmVS) array. A novel preprocessing algorithm based on EmVS subarray averaging (EVSA) is firstly proposed to decorrelate sources’ coherency. Then, the proposed EVSA algorithm is combined with the propagator method (PM) to estimate the EmVS steering vector, and thus estimate the direction-of-arrival (DOA) and the polarization parameters by a vector cross-product operation. Compared with the existing estimate methods, the proposed EVSA-PM enables decorrelation of more coherent signals, joint estimation of the DOA and polarization of coherent sources with a lower computational complexity, and requires no limitation of the intervector sensor spacing within a half-wavelength to guarantee unique and unambiguous angle estimates. Also, the EVSA-PM can estimate these parameters by parameter-space searching techniques. Monte-Carlo simulations are presented to verify the efficacy of the proposed algorithm.