A subspace method for direction of arrival estimation of uncorrelated emitter signals

Herein, a novel eigenstructure-based method for direction estimation is presented. The method assumes that the emitter signals are uncorrelated. Ideas from subspace and covariance matching methods are combined to yield a non-iterative estimation algorithm when a uniform linear array is employed. The large sample performance of the estimator is analyzed. It is shown that the asymptotic variance of the direction estimates coincides with the relevant Cram er-Rao lower bound (CRB). A compact expression for the CRB is derived for the case when it is known that the signals are uncorrelated, and it is lower than the CRB usually used in the array processing literature (assuming no particular structure for the signal covariance matrix). The diierence between the two CRBs can be large in diicult scenarios. This implies that, in such scenarios, the proposed method has signiicantly better performance than existing subspace methods such as, for example, WSF, MUSIC and ESPRIT. Numerical examples are provided to illustrate the obtained results.