A joint estimation method of azimuth, elevation, range and polarization for near field sources without pairing parameters

Abstract

A method based on fourth-order cumulant was presented to estimate the range, elevation, azimuth, and polarization parameters of near-field sources. The method adopted non-centra-symmetric cross array, and every sensor consisted of the orthogonal dipole-pairs with the same coordinate axis direction, which measured the x-axis and y-axis electric-field components of the near-field signals. The method constructed seven fourth-order cumulant matrixes by receiving polarized array data, and estimated the parameters according to the tripartite relationships among subspace matrixes, eigenvalue and eigenvector. The method did not require any spectral peak search and parameter pairing, voided efficiently the loss of array aperture, and can be applied to the additive Gaussian noise environment. The performance of the proposed method was verified by computer simulations.