Joint DOA and polarization estimation algorithm for conformal array antenna

Considering the special manifold characteristic of conformal array, a joint DOA and polarization estimation algorithm is proposed based on rank-deficiency theory. The new algorithm can achieve accurate and high-resolution DOA estimation without the exact knowledge of the source polarization. Simultaneously, favorable polarization estimation can also be acquired jointly with DOA estimation. The proposed method can be applied to arbitrary conformal array structure and only high-dimensional nonlinear search associated with the 2D DOA estimation is involved in its implementation. Compared with the classical joint DOA and polarization estimation algorithm based on high-dimensional nonlinear search, this reduces the computational complexity considerably. The theory performance is analyzed and the CRB (Cramer-Rao Bound) is derived for this algorithm. Monte-Carlo simulation results are provided to demonstrate the performance analysis and the effectiveness of the proposed method.