3D head-mounted antenna array architecture optimization based on the Fisher Information Matrix

This paper introduces a method to optimize the configuration of a 3D helmet-mounted antenna array carried by emergency rescuers expected to locate natural disaster survivors. Configuration optimization is based on metrics extracted from the 3D Fisher Information Matrix (FIM) relative to the considered array architecture for single source Direction Of Arrival (DOA) estimation. Comprehensive simulations illustrate the optimization metrics behaviour with regard to survivor's emitter 3D DOA and array configuration. Design constraints related to helmet-mounted antenna requirements reduce the usually exhausting FIM based design optimization to a 2 degrees of freedom exploration of the array DOA estimation performances.