An efficient joint estimation of wideband polynomial-phase signal parameters and direction-of-arrival in sensor array

Abstract

Abstract We consider the joint estimation of the direction-of-arrival (DOA) and parameters of wideband polynomial-phase signals (PPSs) in sensor array. Unlike concurrent methods that require multidimensional searches, the proposed method requires 1D searches for all the parameters of interest. In this way, we can efficiently estimate the considered parameters in applications where large antenna arrays, containing tens or hundreds of sensors, are used. As special cases, we consider in detail the estimation of the second- and third-order PPSs. The former are estimated using the high-order ambiguity function (HAF), while the latter are estimated using the cubic phase function (CPF), known to outperform the HAF in terms of both accuracy and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) threshold. In both cases, the estimation of the highest order parameter reaches the Cramér-Rao lower bound (CRLB), while the DOA estimation is above the CRLB for around 1 dB (second-order PPS) and around 6 dB (third-order PPS).