A Distributed Direction of Arrival Estimation Algorithm for Self-Organizing Ultra Wide-Band Wireless Sensor Networks

In this paper we investigate the problem of Direction of Arrival (DoA) estimation in distributed and self-organizing Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), which use Ultra Wide-Band (UWB) technology at the physical layer. The proposed DoA estimation technique is based on the Spectral Correlation Multiple Signal Classification (SC-MUSIC) algorithm, which is well suited for wide-band signals and relies on the cyclostationarity properties of UWB signaling. Each sensor node is assumed to be equipped with a single omnidirectional antenna and DoA information is extracted by post-processing the signals received by a cluster of nodes and sent to a sink node. The performance of this algorithm is analyzed by assuming an Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) channel and by including in the analysis errors due to location discovery and timing synchronization procedures. The results show a significant robustness of the algorithm with respect to this kind of errors.