VECTOR-SENSOR ARRAY-PROCESSING FOR ELECTROMAGNETIC SOURCE LOCALIZATION

We present a new approach for localizing electromagnetic sources using sensors where the output of each is a vector consisting of the comple te six electric and magnetic field components. Two types of source tra nsmissions are considered: 1) single signal transmission (SST), and 2) dual signal transmission (DST). The model is given in terms of severa l parameters, including the wave direction of arrival (DOA) and state of polarization. A compact expression is derived for the Cramer-Rao bo und (CRB) on the estimation errors of these parameters for the multi-s ource multi-vector-sensor model. Quality measures including mean-squar e angular error (MSAE) and covariance of vector angular error (CVAE) a re introduced, and their lower bounds are derived. The advantage of us ing vector sensors is highlighted by explicit evaluation of the MSAE a nd CVAE bounds for source localization with a single vector sensor. A simple algorithm for estimating the source DOA with this sensor is pre sented along with its statistical performance analysis.