Experimental Assessment of the Coarray Concept for DoA Estimation in Wireless Communications

The direction of arrival (DoA) estimation performance of three different coarray structures, namely, the nested array, the coprime sampling array, and the sparse ruler array are presented and compared. The coarray concept makes it possible to detect the DoAs of much more sources than the number of physical antennas. Crucial is that for the first time, these coarrays are investigated based on real measurements conducted on a demonstrator platform. Based on the results obtained, the conclusion is clear. The MUSIC algorithm-based coarray concept with spatial smoothing is not suitable for DoA estimation in practical circumstances due to the unavoidable multipath phenomenon.