Frequency-Diverse Computational Direction of Arrival Estimation Technique

Abstract

We present a frequency-diverse based direction of arrival (DoA) estimation technique for millimetre-wave (mmW) 5G channel sounding. Frequency-diversity enables the creation of spatially incoherent radiation masks to encode the plane-wave signals incident on the radar aperture using a single antenna. Leveraging the frequency-diversity concept, spatial information of the plane-wave projections on the radar aperture is retrieved, resulting in high-fidelity DoA estimations by means of a simple Fourier transform operation applied to the retrieved plane-wave projection patterns. It is demonstrated that using the frequency-diversity concept, DoA estimation can be achieved through a simple frequency sweep, compressing the incoming plane-waves into a single channel through the transfer function of the radar aperture. This results in a significant simplification in the system hardware, requiring only a single antenna to achieve DoA estimation. It is also shown that the proposed technique can simultaneously detect the DoA information for multiple sources with a diffraction limited resolution.