Joint Azimuth and Elevation Direction Finding Using Cumulant

Two-dimensional (2-D) directions-of-arrival (DOA) estimation is a key problem in array signal processing fields. To save hardware costs and avoid multidimensional search, Liu et al. proposed an ESPRIT-like algorithm using cumulant. However, this algorithm still have nonneglible drawbacks: (1) suffering losses of the array aperture and resultant fewer sources to be processed from an array of given sensor number; (2) having an estimation failure problem when elevation angles are between 70° and 90° in typical mobile communication; and (3) requiring pairing parameters. To overcome these problems, this paper develops a new cumulant-based algorithm. The main contributions of this paper are three-fold: (1) designing a special volume array to avoid the estimation failure problem; (2) constructing three cumulant matrices using the fourth-order cumulants of some properly chosen array outputs to increase the array aperture; and (3) forming a parallel factor (PARAFAC) model of cumulant matrices in the cumulant domain to avoid pairing parameters. Simulation results are presented to validate the performance of the proposed method.