Direction of arrival estimation using antenna arrays

The objective of this thesis is to design, build and evaluate a direction-of-arrival measurement system using an antenna array operating at 2050 MHz. The first phase of the project is an extensive study of various high resolution DOA estimation algorithms. The algorithms studied include subspace-based techniques such as the MUSIC (MUltiple Signal Classification) and ESPRIT (Estimation of Signal Parameters via Rotational Invariance) algorithm, and the integrated approaches which combine property restoral-based techniques such as the Iterative Least Squares Projection-based Constant Modulus Algorithm (lLSP-CMA) with subspace-based techniques. All these algorithms were simulated in MATLAB and their performance under different conditions were tested and compared. In the second phase of the project a six element uniformly spaced linear array receiver was built. Three Ariel DSP-96 boards based on the Motorola DSP96002 are used to simultaneously sample, collect, and store data from each of the array elements. The data collected by the DSP boards are processed off-line to estimate the directions of arrival. Several experiments are conducted to test the functioning of the system under various conditions, and demonstrate the performance of different algorithms. Results of these experiments are also presented in this thesis.