Estimation of DOA using a cumulant based quadricovariance matrix

This paper discusses the estimation of direction of arrival of narrowband signals received by a linear array. The algorithm uses fourth order cumulants of the array input data to construct a matrix whose dimension is increased by a power of two compared to the classical Multiple Signal Classification (MUSIC) and Estimation of Signal parameters using Rotational Invariance Technique (ESPRIT) algorithm. This extended matrix along with extended array steering vectors uses the steps followed by MUSIC algorithm for the calculation of direction of arrival. The proposed method is able to detect more number of sources than the elements of the array and hence helps in increasing the effective aperture size. Preprocessing using forward backward averaging is used to improve the accuracy of estimation.