IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 57, NO.

4, APRIL 2009

1073

On Proper Antenna Pattern for a Simple Source Detection and Localization System
Mehrzad Biguesh, Senior Member, IEEE, and Saeed Gazor, Senior Member, IEEE
AbstractThis paper proposes a simple and practical passive system for detection and direction nding of a far-eld signal source. The proposed system receives signal emitted from a far away source using a set of similar directional antennas. The envelope of the received signals are used both to detect the existence of a pulse and to estimate its bearing angle. We determine a set of design constraints on the employed antennas pattern such that the processing algorithm be simple and practical which operates in a wide frequency range at each instant. We evaluate the required constrains on the shape of antennas pattern and we study the performance of the proposed algorithm. It is shown that simple antennas can be efciently utilized in this system. Index TermsAngle of arrival (AOA), antenna beam-pattern, detection, direction nder (DF), direction of arrival (DOA), electronic intelligent (Elint), electronic support measure (ESM), localization.

I. INTRODUCTION HE estimation of angel-of-arrival (AOA) of an incoming signal has been studied for a long time and has many applications [1][10]. Direction nder systems (DFSs) are devices that determine the AOA of the received signals from a far-eld point source. The received signals in a DFS may be directly originated from a point source or it may the reections caused by a target of interest. Some early DFSs use one (or two) mechanically rotating antenna to achieve spatial sampling from the received waveforms [4][6]. Also, there are DFSs that use a set of antennas for acquisition of spatial information. The presence/absence of the impinging source is detected and the AOA of the target (point source) is estimated by processing of the acquired samples of the received amplitudes. Many array processing techniques are developed aiming to estimate the bearing angle using samples of the complex received signals from the antenna arrays [9][13]. These methods perform very well and they may have the potential to estimate the AOA of more than one signal source at each time instant. Additionally, they are able to estimate the AOA of sources with relatively high accuracy. However, these techniques are highly

Manuscript received April 12, 2008; revised October 09, 2008. Current version published April 08, 2009. M. Biguesh is with the Department of ECE, Walter Light Hall, Queens University, Kingston K7L 3N6, Canada, on leave from the Department of Electrical Engineering, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran. S. Gazor is with the Department of ECE, Walter Light Hall, Queens University, Kingston K7L 3N6, Canada. Color versions of one or more of the gures in this paper are available online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. Digital Object Identier 10.1109/TAP.2009.2015814

complex (i.e., expensive), too sensitive to the environmental effects, system imperfections and calibration, they are not capable to operate in a wide range of frequencies, and some of them have considerable processing delay. For example, when wideband short pulses are used, the advanced array processing techniques require very accurate synchronization in downconversion and multiple very high speed analog-to-digital-converters (ADC) with sufcient number of bits, which make these systems relatively expensive and complicated. In addition, most of these systems require IF components, which are relatively bulky and expensive. Burtnyk, McNeish, and Wolfe described a method for direction nding by sampling the phase and amplitude of the received signal using an array of antennas [11]. Johnson in [12] addressed the problem of high frequency radio direction nding, using the eigenstructure of the received signal correlation matrix. Ferrara and Parks proposed the diversely polarized antennas to measure the signal bearing and estimate the AOA of multiple narrow band signals using maximum likelihood (ML), adapted angular response (AAR), and also multiple signal classication (MUSIC) methods [14]. Symmetric-pair antenna arrays is another method to extract the signal bearing angle by means of signal phase measurement [15]. DuFort, in [16], used the powers of the uncorrelated received signals from a uniform linear array in order to estimate the received signal correlation matrix and consequently estimate the bearing angle of emitters. Kummer proposed electronically scanned Wullenweber arrays for direction nding [17]. An interesting method for AOA estimation of two targets in a monopulse radar is addressed in [18] and the performance of AOA estimation is studied using Monte Carlo simulations. Problem of bearing estimation using multiple calibrated subarrays with identical orientation is discussed in [19] by a search-free eigenstructure-based approach. In [20], the problem is extended to estimate both azimuth and elevation using multiple identical subarrays displaced in different directions. A direction nder that uses symmetric-pair antenna array is presented in [21]. Friedlander and Weiss discuss the problem of direction nding for wide-band signals in [22]. This paper introduces a very simple noncoherent method to detect and localize a source in a wide frequency range. The proposed method performs both tasks (detection and localization) using one snapshot of signals. This system requires at least three identical directional antennas and only the baseband envelopes of the received signals are converted from analog to digital domain, which considerably simplies the system implementation. However, our proposed method may fail to operate properly if there are more than one impinging signal over a given short time period. Many existing DFSs have this limitation mainly because of their price (e.g., [23]). Our proposed system

0018-926X/$25.00 2009 IEEE

1074

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 57, NO. 4, APRIL 2009

, and an analogue to digital converter. The shape of antenna patterns is important in our system. In particular using identical directional antennas, we assume that (1) antennas are looking at directions , respectively, to uniformly cover the whole azimuth. Additionally, uniform distribution of the antennas on a circle is preferred due to practical issues. This is because the mutual coupling effect between the antennas impacts their patterns in an identical way as a result of symmetrical geometry. It is reasonable to assume that the dimension of , where the system of antennas is sufciently less than is signal propagation speed and is the minimum duration of the desired pulse. This assumption is required to guarantee the existence of signal emanated from a source on all antenna at a given time. Assuming symmetric antenna patterns, i.e., , we express by Fourier series expansion as (2a) (2b) (2c) where the pattern-coefcients Z determine the Z shape of gain pattern. Keeping in mind that the pattern-coefcients are mainly function of frequency , in the sequel we sometimes drop argument from our formulations to save some space. Also, for the sake of simplicity, let us neglect the background noise and consider that there is possibly one point source at the bearing angle . For this antenna arrangement, the outputs envelopes are given by This means that

Fig. 1. Block diagram of the proposed DF system.

is operational as long as sources are separated in time domain, for example, multiple pulse radars could be detected and localized using this system as long as the time arrival of their pulses are disjointed in time. Instead, the proposed method in this paper only requires the envelope of the signals from the array which considerably simplies the RF and electronic circuitry of the system. In addition, the analogue to digital conversion of signal envelopes are performed at a much lower rate while covering a signicantly wider bandwidth. Additionally, the deteriorations caused by penetration of low power continuous signals can be assuaged using simple dc blocking circuits after envelope detectors in the system. In the sequel, we rst propose simple methods for detection and localization. Then, we determine a set of required constrains on the shape of the employed antenna pattern such that the proposed methods operate as good as possible in a noise free scenario. We show that a wide-range of antenna patterns such as cardioid and Gaussian shape patterns, can be efciently used in the proposed system. Using computer simulations, we study the system performance in presence of noise and also we briey study the suitable beamwidth of the directional antenna pattern to increase the accuracy of bearing estimation in the presence of noise. II. PROPOSED DIRECTION FINDING METHOD Assume a system with directional antennas (see denotes the gain pattern of the th Fig. 1). Let where antenna element operating at frequency is the azimuth angle of the signal source and the second argument shows that the antenna pattern may be also a function of received signal carrier frequency. By the gain pattern we mean the square root of the magnitude of the antenna propagation pattern. For each antenna, we use a noncoherent envelope detector consisting of cascade of a bandpass lter, a nonlinear , a low-pass lter, a second nonlinear system system

(3) , is proportional to the where the received signal envelope, square root of the signal power, the system processing gain and the attenuation of the propagation medium. It is possible to estimate the angle of arrival by curve tting. This can be done by over . minimizing some some norm of However, such optimization is computationally complex. III. PROPOSED DETECTION AND LOCALIZATION ALGORITHMS Fig. 1 shows the block diagram of the proposed system where the received signals from multiple antennas are rst bandpass ltered (using a set of similar processing blocks which are not shown in this gure) and processed by similar envelope detectors. Then the samples of the envelopes are processed as follows: (4)

BIGUESH AND GAZOR: ON PROPER ANTENNA PATTERN FOR A SIMPLE SOURCE DETECTION

1075

(5) Note that and can be viewed as the two rst Fourier series . We use as a decision test statistic coefcients of in order to detect the presence of a point source by comparing with a constant threshold. Once a source is detected, we use as an estimate for the location the angle of the conjugate of of the source. Therefore, we determine the required constraints on the ansuch that the proposed algorithm could lotenna pattern calize and detect accurately at a noise free scenario. Thus, in order to obtain an estimate of signal source AOA, we use (6) as an estimator for locaThe rational behind the utilization tion is that the envelope signal outputs of antennas, can be viewed as a uniform sampling (with a ) of the periodic antenna pattern which sampling space of is circularly (spatially) shifted by (that is the AOA of target). So the source localization here means to estimate the phase shift of the envelope. Obviously for large , this spatial shift translates in frequency domain only in the phase. Since is the rst component of the DFT of the signal, its phase is equal to minus in the absence of noise. The proposed estimator is very simple and straightforward method; the phase of the rst component of the DFT is the estimate of the location. Localization algorithms using LMS type algorithms are signicantly more expensive. In contrast to LMS-type algorithms [9], [10], the proposed algorithm requires only one temporal snapshot. 1) Constraints on Antenna Pattern for Accurate AOA Estimation: In particular, we rst optimize by minimizing the average squared localization error, that is (7) The above gives a set of conditions on the antenna pattern in a noise free scenario. Substituting (2a) and (3) in (5), we can write (8)

Since the argument of the integration in (10) is nonnegative, the optimum is achieved if (11) This condition makes the AOA estimator in (6) unbiased under additive zero mean noise scenario. This set of constraints is imposed only on a subset of the pattern-coefcients. As a result, a wide number of antennas can be used/designed for the proposed direction nding system. 2) Constraints on Beam-Pattern for Signal Detection: Before estimating the AOA of a received pulse, the system must detect the presence of signal. Assume that we are interested to is detect the signal by comparing (4) with a threshold. Here, not only proportional to but also is a function of impinging AOA angle . Our goal is to nd the required conditions for the such that in a noise free scenario, be antenna pattern almost independent of AOA angle, . This is logical since the system must detect the sources independent of the impinging angle of arrival. Mathematically, we must solve the following minimization problem in a noise free scenario, (12) where is some positive constant. The above gives an additional set of conditions on the antenna pattern . Substituting (2a) and (3) in (4) and using similar manipulations as before, we obtain (13) Thus, the minimization problem (12) can be rewritten as

(14) We see easily that the above is minimized if for (15) for . It is noteworthy to stress that (15) does not impose any constraint on other pattern coefcients. It is noticeable that a sufciently smooth beam-pattern can be used in the proposed DFS as approximately satises constraints (11) and (15). This is because for a smooth beam pattern, the coefcients decay fast as increases. Thus, the proposed system works properly over a wide range of frequencies as long as constraints (11) and (15) are satised with a good approximation. In the presence of noise and for a given bearing angle , the following statistic can enhance the detection performance:

(9) To obtain (9) from (8), we set with and and replace by 0 where is not any multiple factor of and by otherwise. Using (9), we rewrite (7) as shown in (10) at the bottom of the page.

(10)

1076

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 57, NO. 4, APRIL 2009

IV. SIMULATIONS AND DISCUSSIONS As we showed, directional antennas with wide variety of patterns can be used in the proposed direction nding system. The beam patterns shown in Fig. 2(a) and (b) satisfy (11) and (15) . This is because for , thus, they for any satisfy (11) and (15) for proper operation in our system. With similar reasoning, the beam pattern shown in Fig. 2(c) can be . As seen, the very simple nonomused in a system with nidirectional antenna shown in Fig. 2(a) and also the cardioid pattern antenna shown in Fig. 2(b) can be applied in the proposed system. In our simulations, we assume perfect envelope detectors, point sources, and that Gaussian noise is added to the modulated signal before envelope detector. In the next four simulation scenarios, we used the antenna pattern shown in Fig. 2(b) and 3600 Monte Carlo runs are used to compute each point of our simulations in which the bearing angle of point source is assumed to be random with uniform distribution over azimuth angle. Using the antenna pattern in Fig. 2(b), system is able to accurately measure the signal bearing angle in the absence of noise. However, in a noisy scenario, the estimated bearing angle has some errors. To study the effect of noise on the performance of AOA estimation, we consider the root-mean-square (RMS) of the bearing angle estimation error where denotes the mathematical expectation, and and are the true and the estimated angle of arrivals, respectively. versus the received SNR for various Fig. 3 (top) shows number of antenna elements . As is expected, the estimation error decreases with the input SNR and also the number of used antenna elements . Study of our simulation results show that is inversely proportional to . In a sufciently high SNR scenario, the envelope of th antenna received signal, in the presence of noise can be approximated1 as follows: (18) where random variable is the component of complex noise which is in phase with the noise free envelope . is a zero mean white Gaussian noise process We assume that with variance of where is the variance of complex noise before the envelope detector. In this case assuming that and antenna patterns are known, the Cramr-Rao bond (CRB) is given by (19)
1A more accurate model is to assume a joint Rice distribution for the observed envelops as the following:

Fig. 2. Typical proper antenna beam-patterns applicable in a system with 7 antenna elements. (a) = 943 471 0 0 . . . . (b) = = 741 494 371 494 371 371 0 0 .. . . 817 817 0 0 . . . . (c)

N f: ;: ; ; ; g

fa g f: ; : ; ; ; g fa g fa g f: ;: ;: ;: ;: ;: ; ; ; g

(16)

f (s ; . . . ; s s =  I 1

) exp

0(s

v g( 0 n 2

) )

I s v g( 0 n  v

)
(17)

The above is a weighted sum of the observed samples which maximize the output SNR for high signal to noise scenario. One may use as the rst step detection, then estimate the bearing angle using (6) and nally compare with a threshold for a more accurate reconrmation of the detection results.

where ( ) is the zero-order modied Bessel function of the rst kind. The is more accurate than our proposed method and is obtained ML estimator of and . However, this by maximizing the above jointly with respect to , optimizations has no closed form solution and could be implemented using the gradient decent algorithm initialized by our method.

 

BIGUESH AND GAZOR: ON PROPER ANTENNA PATTERN FOR A SIMPLE SOURCE DETECTION

1077

^ E = E ( 0  ) (in degree) versus number of AOA estimations K used in averaging to increase the accuracy of a source angular estimation for N = 6, 10, 16, and 32. The cos-series coefcient for the assumed antenna beam-patterns are a = 0:817 for k = 0; 1 and a = 0 for k  2.
Fig. 4. The root mean square error

Fig. 3. Localization performance: The root mean square error

versus SNR with the CRB various number of receive antenna N (Top) E and N (bottom). The cos-series coefcient for the for cases with N antenna patterns are a : for k ; and a for k .

^ E ( 0  )

(in degree) of the AOA estimation as a function of SNR for

=6

= 32 = 0 817

=0 1

=0

2

Fig. 5. Robustness of the proposed method to the antenna gain calibration: The of antenna pattern defection D . The noise free scenario marked with . other curves are for root mean square error E

^ = E ( 0  )

(in degree) as a function

Fig. 3(b) compares and square root of the average of (in fact the square root of CRB in this plot) for and . As seen the localization performance of the proposed method is tightly following the lower CRB. We must mention that one may design the antenna pattern numerically in order to improve the achievable performance. For example, such that by minimizing the above CRB, i.e., by choosing is maximized under some antenna design constraints. In Fig. 3, we notice that the CRB is lower than even at high SNR. This gap is because the above CRB is derived assuming that the noise variance and signal power are known, where as the proposed algorithm do not require this information. Assuming a Rice distribution for the observed encan be found with a velops, a tight CRB matrix for very complicated and long expression. The accuracy of AOA estimation in our proposed system can also be enhanced if some integration or pulse to pulse averaging versus the number of is used for this system. Fig. 4 shows AOA estimations used in averaging to increase the accuracy

SNR = 30 dB

+ and the

of source angular estimation for various (here, the average of consequent AOA estimations is used to improve the estimaroughly decreases tion of bearing angle). As is expected, with . Nonhomogeneous environment, inaccurate antenna installation, dissimilarity of the set of antennas, dissimilar envelope detectors and other circuit imperfections in antenna branches, are also sources of error in bearing estimation. All these imperfections can be considered as the deviation of antennas patterns is the desired from its desired shape. Assuming that is the defected antenna beam-patantenna pattern and tern, we denote the normalized pattern deviation by . In our next simulation, , where we refer to as we assume that the maximum deviation in antenna patterns. In our simulations, is generated from using a uniform random error

1078

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 57, NO. 4, APRIL 2009

Fig. 6. Robustness of the proposed method to the antenna direction calibration: The root mean square error

Fig. 7. The root mean square error degree) as a function of beamwidth, with

^ = E ( 0  )

(in degree) as

a function of antenna pointing error. A noise free scenario marked with the other curves are for .

SNR = 30 dB

+ and

g() = A( ) expf02ln(2) = g

E 

^ E ( 0  )

(in

+) and for SNR = 20 dB.

, when the antennas pattern is for a noise free scenario (marked

over . Fig. 5 shows versus for various number of antennas for high SNR environment and for . The illustrated curves are the averaged . Interestingly, increasing RMS error results over the number of used antennas results in a more robust system against such an array imperfections. However, we also observe that for large number of antenna elements the performance is bounded by array imperfections. To study the effect of calibration error on the performance of the proposed DFS, we have assumed independent uniform pointing error over for each antenna of the system. Fig. 6 plots versus for various obtained from our computer simulations. Regarding these results, the proposed method is robust against this form of calibration error. Again, systems with more antenna elements seems more robust against this calibration error. In Fig. 7, we employed the truncated Gaussian beampattern (see Fig. 1 and (4) of [24]) is the 3-dB mainlobe beamwidth and is where the peak of antenna gain, in order to investigate the impact of the mainlobe beamwidth of the antenna elements. It is intuitively evident that the system fails to properly receive the signal arriving from noncovered angles if we employ antennas with too is small compared with narrow beamwidth (i.e., where ). In this case, the AOA estimation error increases for the impinging signals from those directions which are not capas a function of the antenna tured properly. Fig. 7 depicts for a noise-free scenario and for SNR . beamwidth We observe that the localization error is almost minimized if the (in radian). As it is beamwidth is approximately around intuitively expected, the system performance seriously degrades is considerably away from its optimum. From a geometif rical point of view, if is considerably smaller than , the gain of all antennas are small for the arrival angles around for . This can also be interpreted by the fact that a narrow beam-pattern results in the increase of for larger values of . As a Fourier series coefcients

result, (11) may be severely violated if the antenna mainlobes are too narrow. If the beamwidth is too large, different antennas will observe the received signal with almost the same envelope. This in turn reduces the ability of discriminating different locatends to zero tions. Obviously, as the beamwidth increases for . In this case, we observe that in (9) tends to zero, i.e., the noise impact becomes more signicant. Fig. 7 also shows that the system performance is less sensitive if the . The Gaussian antenna mainlobe is slightly wider than shape beampattern in Fig. 7 results in some bias errors in noise free scenario. These bias errors are the result of the deviations from the ideal conditions given by (11). We note of that (11) and (15) are not strict. The proposed method is also sensitive to those systematic errors which have more impact on the direction offset of the pattern of antennas compared with the designated directions. It is not easy to derive the optimal detectors and estimators for such systems using the envelope of received signals [13]. The main reason is that the distribution of observed envelopes given unknown parameters such as location of the sources and the noise variance and array parameters is a multivariate Rice distribution. In this case, iterative algorithms may be used to evaluate generalized likelihood ratio for obtaining better performance. Many imperfections induce extra errors in the system. Some of these imperfections depend on the system design (for example, if antenna elements are dissimilar or not calibrated), whereas some others depend on the environment (for example, if the energy of the noise is not spatially uniform, if the impact of scattering environment makes signicant difference over different antennas and so on). To reduce the cost, we may implement this system as follows. We could lter the envelope signals (to reduce the out of band with noise), add them together to calculate , and compare the threshold . These steps may be performed either in ana, we need , i.e., callogue or digital domain. Only if and may culation and analogue to digital conversion of be necessary only if any target is anticipated.

BIGUESH AND GAZOR: ON PROPER ANTENNA PATTERN FOR A SIMPLE SOURCE DETECTION

1079

We also simulated and studied the performance of the proposed system for imperfect components. Our simulation results also reveal that the optimum beamwidth of antenna pattern is . approximately ACKNOWLEDGMENT The authors acknowledge that the reviewers comments improved this paper. REFERENCES
[1] J. Blakely, U.S. Coast Guard automatic direction nder model RD-132, Trans. IRE Profess. Group Commun. Syst., vol. 3, pp. 1622, Mar. 1955. [2] D. Travers, J. Moore, and W. Sherrill, Multiloop antenna arrays for high-frequency shipboard direction nding, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 13, pp. 665671, Sep. 1965. [3] D. N. Travers and W. M. Sherrill, General procedure for computing direction nding errors, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 13, p. 997, Nov. 1965. [4] G. Evans, The crossed-spaced-loop direction-nder aerial, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 10, pp. 686691, Nov. 1962. [5] S. E. Nipsky, Microwave Passive Direction Finding. New York: Wiley, 1987. [6] G. J. Sonnenberg, Radar and Electronic Navigation, 6th ed. New York: Butterworth, 1988. [7] E. Boch and M. Stapleton, Direction-nding performance of a Ka-band ESM receiver, IEEE Microw. Guided Wave Lett., vol. 4, pp. 910, Jan. 1994. [8] T. Rahim and D. E. N. Davies, Effect of directional elements on the directional response of circular array, Proc. Inst. Elect. Eng. Radar, Sonar Navig., vol. 129, no. 1, pt. F, pp. 1822, 1982. [9] S. Gazor, S. Affes, and Y. Grenier, Robust adaptive beamforming via target tracking, IEEE Trans. Signal Process., vol. 44, pp. 15891593, Jun. 1996. [10] S. Gazor, S. Affes, and Y. Grenier, Wideband multi-source beamforming with adaptive array location calibration and direction nding, in Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. Acoust., Speech Signal Process., ICASSP95, May 1995, vol. III, pp. 19041907. [11] N. Burtnyk, C. McNeish, and J. Wolfe, A wide aperture sampling linear array for direction nding, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 12, pp. 248256, May 1964. [12] R. Johnson, Eigenvector matrix partition and radio direction nding performance, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 34, pp. 985991, Aug. 1986. [13] A. A. Tadaion, M. Derakhtian, S. Gazor, and M. R. Aref, A fast multiple-source detection and localization array signal processing algorithm using the spatial ltering and ML approach, IEEE Trans. Signal Process., vol. 55, pp. 18151827, May 2007. [14] E. R. Ferrara and T. M. Parks, Direction nding with an array of antennas having diverse polarizations, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 31, pp. 231236, May 1983. [15] R. Benjamin, W. Titze, P. V. Brennan, and H. D. Grifths, Symmetricpair antennas for beam steering, direction nding or isotropic-reception gain, Proc. Inst. Elect. Eng., vol. 138, no. 4, pt. H, Aug. 1991. [16] E. DuFort, High-resolution emitter direction nding using a phased array antenna, IEEE Trans. Acoust., Speech, Signal Process., vol. 31, pp. 14091416, Dec. 1983. [17] W. Kummer, Broadband microwave electronically scanned direction nder, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 31, pp. 1826, Jan. 1983. [18] W. D. Blair and M. Brandt-Pearce, Monopulse DOA estimation of two unresolved Rayleigh targets, IEEE Trans. Aerosp. Electron. Syst., vol. 37, no. 2, Apr. 2001. [19] M. Pesavento, A. B. Gershman, and K. M. Wong, Direction nding in partly calibrated sensor arrays composed of multiple subarrays, IEEE Trans. Signal Process., vol. 50, pp. 21032115, Sep. 2002. [20] A. N. Swindlehurst and T. Kailath, Azimuth/elevation direction nding using regular array geometries, IEEE Trans. Aerosp. Electron. Syst., vol. 29, pp. 145156, Jan. 1993. [21] W. A. U. Titze, P. V. Brennan, and R. Benjamin, Direction nding system using symmetric-pair antenna arrays, Proc. Inst. Elect. Eng. Proc.-Radar, Sonar Navig., vol. 142, no. 3, pt. F, pp. 130136, Jun. 1995.

Fig. 8. Probability of false alarm (P ) versus probability of detection (P ) for decision statistics in (4) and (16), using N = 8 antenna elements.

Fig. 8 depicts the false alarm probability of the system using carversus the probability of signal detection dioid antennas with beampatterns shown in Fig. 2(b). As we expect, the detector in (16) signicantly outperforms the detector in (4). The price paid for this improvement is the extra computational cost. In addition, the detection performance of (16) degrades more drastically compared with (4) if the SNR is decreased. This is because the decision statistic in (16) depends on the estimated AOA . In this gure, the detection threshold is adjusted such that the probability of false alarm equals to a predetermined value. In general, the detection threshold is obtained , where is the cumulative distribuby solving for the case of tion function (cdf) of the decision statistic noise only. In [25, Fig. 2], the Fourier series coefcients for four practical antennas (Half-Wavelength Dipole, Microstrip Antenna, Vertical Electric Dipole, and Finite Length Dipole) are calculated and plotted. The discussed conditions in this paper obviously can be imposed easily. V. CONCLUSION We introduced a simple and practical DFS using arbitrary number of similar directional antennas. The proposed system estimates the AOA of individual received pulses using the envelope of the received signals. Since the proposed system uses the envelope of signals, it can be implemented at a very low cost, it has a robust performance, and it can operate over a wide frequency range. We studied the required condition on the pattern of directional antennas for proper operation of the system. In particular, the required condition on the antenna patterns is that the Fouriermust satisfy series coefcient and for all where is the number of antenna elements applied in DFS. As a result, we can exibly employ a large number of antenna types with simple directional beam-patterns. These conditions are not strict and any smooth can be used as beam-pattern with a mainlobe of about long as s are sufciently small for .

1080

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION, VOL. 57, NO. 4, APRIL 2009

[22] B. Friedlander and A. J. Weiss, Direction nding for wide-band signals using an interpolated array, IEEE Trans. Signal Process., vol. 41, pp. 16181634, Apr. 1993. [23] S. Henault, Y. M. M. Antar, S. Rajan, R. Inkol, S. Wang, and C. Wilson, Mutual coupling analysis of coplanar adcock direction nding arrays, in Proc. 24th Biennial Symp. Commun., Jun. 2426, 2008, pp. 2730. [24] H. S. Rad and S. Gazor, The impact of non-isotropic scattering and directional antennas on MIMO multicarrier mobile communication channels, IEEE Trans. Commun., vol. 56, no. 4, pp. 642652, Apr. 2008. [25] H. S. Rad and S. Gazor, A cross-correlation model for non-isotropic scattering with non-omnidirectional antennas in MIMO propagation channels, in Proc. IEEE 6th Workshop on Signal Process. Adv. Wireless Commun., Jun. 58, 2005, pp. 251255.

clude sensor array signal processing, MIMO communication systems, wireless communications, and radar signal processing.

Mehrzad Biguesh (S89M02SM08) received the Ph.D. degree in telecommunications (with honors) from Sharif University of Technology (SUT), Tehran, Iran, in 2000. During 20002001, he was with SUT as an Associate Member. From March 2002 to December 2004, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Department of Communication Systems, University of Duisburg-Essen, Duisburg, Germany. He was Visiting Researcher with the University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada, for a period of time in 2004. In January 2005, he joined the Department of Electrical Engineering, Shiraz University, as an Assistant Professor. Since June 2007, he has also been with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Queens University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, as a Visiting Researcher. His research interests in-

Saeed Gazor (S94M95SM98) received the B.Sc. degree in electronics engineering and the M.Sc. degree in communication systems engineering, both (summa cum laude), from Isfahan University of Technology, Isfahan, Iran, in 1987 and 1989, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree in signal and image processing from the cole Nationale Suprieure des Tlcommunications/ENST, Telecom Paris, France, in 1994. Since 1999, he has been on the Faculty at Queens University at Kingston, Ontario, Canada, and currently holds the position of Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He is also cross-appointed to the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Queens University. Prior to joining Queens University, he was an Assistant Professor with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Isfahan University of Technology, from 1995 to 1998. He was a Research Associate with the University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada, from January 1999 to July 1999. His main research interests are array signal processing, statistical and adaptive signal processing, speech processing, image processing, detection and estimation theory, MIMO communication systems, collaborative networks, channel modeling, and information theory. Dr. Gazor has received a number of awards including a Provincial Premiers Research Excellence Award (now known as Early Research Award), a Canadian Foundation of Innovation Award, and an Ontario Innovation Trust Award. He is a member of the Professional Engineers of Ontario. He is currently serving as an Associate Editor for the IEEE SIGNAL PROCESSING LETTERS.