Performance analysis of direction-of-arrival and polarization estimation using a non-uniform linear COLD array

The co-centered orthogonal loop and dipole array is commonly used in sources localization using jointly the polarization and spatial diversities. For this type of array, most of the performance analysis studies present in the literature rely on asymptotic regimes. In this paper, we focus on the performance analysis in the non-asymptotic region. More precisely, we derive the McAulay-Hofstetter bound on the source parameters estimation problem, namely, the direction-of-arrival and polarization parameters. Such bound allows us to predict the so-called breakdown point location, which delimits the optimal operational area of any unbiased efficient algorithm. Additionally, we propose an iterative based Maximum-Likelihood algorithm to asses for the tightness of the proposed bound. Finally, a numerical example is provided to corroborate the presented result.