Calibration-Based 2-D DOA Estimation Exploiting 2qth-Order Cumulants for Polarimetric Arrays

In practical engineering, there exist various types of array errors, causing significant degradation in direction finding performance. As a result, array calibration plays a crucial role in practical array signal processing. In this paper, a calibration-based two-dimensional (2-D) direction of arrival (DOA) estimation method based on 2qth-order cumulants is proposed, which can be applied to arbitrary polarimetric arrays with unknown array errors. All the errors are modeled into a non-parametric angle-dependent error matrix. The array output across 2-D potential angle grids are obtained by placing two calibration sources with arbitrary but different polarimetric parameters. Subsequently, an array calibration matrix is generated from the calibration process. The equivalence of the matrix pencils calculated by the calibration matrix and the non-ideal error-corrupted matrix is proven, forming a low-complexity calibrated polarization diversity 2q-MUSIC (CPD-2q-MUSIC) method without reconstructing the error matrix incorporating all array errors. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.