Spatially spread dipole/loop quint for vector-cross-product-based direction finding and polarisation estimation

We propose a spatially spread quint (SS-quint) of only dipoles or loops, for direction of arrival (DOA) and polarisation estimation. The proposed SS-quint is spatially centrosymmetric. Based on this centrosymmetry, the authors develop a computationally low-cost DOA and polarisation estimator via vector-cross-product. Compared with the spatially spread electromagnetic vector-sensor, the proposed SS-quint consists of only dipoles or loops, and thus, its components have more consistent responses. Compared with a previously proposed SS-quint configuration, which is required to be strictly uniformly L-shaped, the proposed SS-quint has a more flexible array configuration in the sense that it is not restricted to any particular shape. The Cramer-Rao bounds are derived and simulation results are provided, to demonstrate the performance of the proposed SS-quint array configuration.