Super-Resolution DOA Estimation Using Dynamic Metasurface Antenna

Dynamic metasurface antenna (MSA) exploits the radiation properties of its elements to generate a variety of desired beam patterns, and unlike traditional antenna array it avoids controlling the gain and phase at each element. This inherent beamforming capability leads to a compact and low-cost antenna implementation. This paper investigates direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation using the dynamic MSA, a fundamental problem in array processing. MSA has only a single-port output, and thus traditional DOA estimation techniques with the array data are not applicable. However, the outputs from the diverse patterns of the dynamic MSA are similar to the data of the traditional antenna array in beam-space. Then the beam-space DOA estimation approaches can be utilized to process the data of the dynamic MSA. A MUSIC-based algorithm is suggested and the DOA estimation performance of the dynamic MSA is simulated. It is found that the super-resolution DOA estimation can be achieved and the dynamic MSA for DOA estimation is an interesting alternative to the traditional antenna array.