Performance analysis and DOA estimation method over acoustic vector sensor array in the presence of polarity inconsistency

This paper investigates the direction of arrival (DOA) estimation performance in the presence of polarity inconsistency in uniform acoustic vector sensor (AVS) linear array. We analyze the influence of polarity bias on beampattern directivity of the AVS array. The analysis results show that the polarity bias leads to asymptotically biased estimation. Then, the analytical expression for the asymptotic bias based on classical beamforming is derived in the presence of polarity error. Moreover, to improve the DOA estimation performance in the presence of polarity inconsistency, a polarity calibration method is proposed. Numerical simulations reveal the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed calibration method when the polarity error satisfies with the uniform distribution and the normal distribution.