A Robust Time Modulated Array Direction Finding Method with Error Compensation for Picket Fence Effect

A novel time-modulated array (TMA) direction finding (DF) method based on interpolated DFT (ipDFT) is proposed to compensate for the DF errors induced by the Picket Fence Effect. The basic principle of the proposed method is as follows: Firstly, the fundamental spectral peak and sub-peak in the DFT results are extracted and applied to estimate the frequency sampling error caused by the Picket Fence Effect. Subsequently, this error will be compensated through frequency-shifting. Finally, harmonics are extracted from the compensated DFT results and then used for the two-element TMA DF. Generalization of this approach for TMA DF is proved. And numerical simulations demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. Compared to the conventional DFT, this method has the advantages of higher accuracy and stability.