EFFICIENT DIRECTION AND POLARIZATION ESTIMATION WITH A COLD ARRAY

This paper considers angle and polarization estimation by means of a c ocentered orthogonal loop and dipole (COLD) array, We show that by usi ng the COLD array, the performance of both angle and polarization esti mation can be greatly improved, as compared to using a crossed dipole array. We present an asymptotically statistically efficient method of direction estimation (MODE) algorithm that can be used with the COLD a rray for both angle and polarization estimation of correlated (includi ng coherent) or uncorrelated incident signals. Numerical examples are given to show the better estimation performance of the MODE algorithm than that of the multiple signal classification (MUSIC) and the noise subspace-fitting (NSF) algorithms.