Probability of Detection of the Angle of Arrival for Massive MIMO Arrays

In massive multiple input multiple output systems, where a large number of antennas are used, the dependency of the power spectrum on the signal direction allows angle-of-arrival (AoA) estimation with a very high precision. In this paper, we derive the probability to correctly detect the AoA using the conventional beamformer. The derivation is presented in an exact manner for uniform linear arrays and uniform rectangular array geometries. The resulting expressions depend on the noise power, fading variance, the number of signal snapshots, and the number of antennas. We have numerically evaluated the simulated and analytical probability of detection and they have shown a perfect agreement for distinct scenarios.