A Novel Multi-Dimensional Spectrum Estimation Technique using Antenna Array Displacement

Abstract

Conventionally, in multi-dimensional spectral estimation techniques, each data snapshot in space is capturedsimultaneously. All antenna elements or sensors being used to collect data are sampled at the same time. By doing so, thesize of the antenna array is proportional to the area of interest in space. The antenna array is prohibitively huge if thearea that we want to cover is large. In this paper, in order to reduce the number of antenna elements in use, we propose anovel multi-dimensional spectrum estimation technique based on displacing small antenna arrays along predefined paths.It includes a data measurement technique which sequentially collects data samples within each snapshot in space accordingto a predefined order, and a spectral estimation technique which is based on the Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) of thecollected data. The key idea is to create a large synthetic antenna aperture by displacing a small antenna array along apredefined trajectory. Impinging waves are assumed uniform plane waves. The performance of the proposed technique isevaluated by simulation. The applications of the proposed technique include synthetic aperture radar, radar image processingand sonar systems.