Joint Detection and the AoA Estimation of Noncoherent Signals in Multi-Element Antennas

In this paper, we investigate two schemes of a joint detection and signal wavefront estimation for noncoherent signals. Both the developed schemes are based on the GLR (Generalized Likelihood Ratio) method. The first scheme does not exploit assumptions about the shape of signal wavefront. That leads to the known max lambda test, which uses maximum eigenvalue of a sample correlation matrix of signals in multi-element antenna as a decision statistics. The second scheme uses a priori information about the plane shape of the useful signal wavefront. A three-stage procedure of angle-of-arrival (AoA) estimation for signals with plane wavefront is proposed. This procedure allows to avoid ambiguities in the signal phases measurement on the antenna elements, and is applicable for antenna arrays with arbitrary known geometry. The numerical simulations have been done for comparative analysis of the characteristics of the developed joint detection-estimation algorithms. It was shown that the second scheme provides ldB-2dB depending on the number of antenna elements) in comparison with the max lambda test.