Modified calibration method for MUSIC method with an array antenna

In this paper, we propose a modified calibration method to improve the accuracy of direction of arrival (DOA) estimation, and conduct simulations and experiments to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method. In a system for DOA estimation, because the accuracy of the DOA estimation is degraded by the mutual coupling among the antenna elements, these elements must be calibrated. Therefore, we propose a modified calibration method to implement these improvements while considering the mutual coupling among the elements and the manufacturing errors. We verify the effectiveness of the proposed method by simulations and improve the accuracy by about twofold compared to the conventional method in experiments. In addition, the estimation accuracy is degraded by changes in the directions of the angle of elevation and the angle of dip in the conventional method, but we demonstrate the ability to suppress degradation by applying the proposed method. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electron Comm Jpn Pt 1, 90(10): 1– 13, 2007; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/ecja.20398