B. Porat et B. Friedlander, ACCURACY REQUIREMENTS IN OFF-LINE ARRAY CALIBRATION, IEEE transactions on aerospace and electronic systems, 33(2), 1997, pp. 545-556
Practical sensor arrays are characterized by certain physical paramete
rs, related to the array shape and its electrical properties. Accurate
direction finding requires calibration of these parameters to a relat
ively high accuracy. Depending on the application, calibration may be
performed either off-line or on-line. Off-line calibration is performe
d by transmitting signals from known locations and measuring the array
response. The array parameters can then be estimated by maximum likel
ihood, least-squares, or some other algorithm. This work relates the p
arameter estimation accuracy achieved in off-line calibration to the d
irection-of-arrival (DOA) errors during on-line operation. it then pro
poses a criterion for choosing the off-line calibration points (number
and location) so as to meet on-line accuracy requirements.