A Novel Online Mutual Coupling Compensation Algorithm for Uniform and Linear Arrays

In this paper, a novel online mutual coupling compensation algorithm especially tailored to uniform and linear arrays is presented. It is conceived to simultaneously compensate for mutual coupling and estimate the direction-of-arrivals (DOAs) of signals impinging on the array since the estimated calibration matrix can be embedded within any classical super-resolution direction-finding method. An alternating minimization procedure based on closed-form solutions is performed to estimate the mutual coupling matrix in the field of complex symmetric Toeplitz matrices. Unlike many existing array calibration methods, it requires neither the presence of calibration sources nor previous calibration information as initialization. Computer simulations show the effectiveness of the proposed technique and prove that the nice statistical properties of classical super-resolution DOA estimation algorithms can be restored despite the presence of mutual coupling