Direction-of-arrival estimation of highly correlated signals by applying forward-backward averaging to the ESPRIT algorithm for 7-element ESPAR antenna

The ESPRIT (estimation of signal parameters via rotational invariance techniques) algorithm for the electronically steerable parasitic array radiator (ESPAR) antenna is proposed for the direction-of-arrival (DoA) estimation of highly correlated signals by adding forward-backward averaging (FBA) pre-processing (FBA-ESPAR-ESPRIT). The performance of the proposed method is compared to that of MUSIC and to the Cramer-Rao lower bound (CRB). Results show that FBA-ESPAR-ESPRIT significantly improves the performance of DoA estimation in the case of highly correlated signals and provides a reliability criterion that clearly indicates whether estimates are reliable. Moreover, performance analysis shows that the performance of FBA-ESPAR-ESPRIT is close enough to the CRB to consider it sufficient for DoA finding applications.