Two-Dimensional Direction Finding Based on Cylindrical Nested Conformal Array

Recently, nested conformal arrays have attracted considerable interest due to their ability to provide increased array aperture and enhanced degrees of freedom compared to uniform conformal arrays. In this article, we address the problem of 2-D direction finding using the cylindrical nested conformal array (CNCA). First of all, we derive the coarray signal model of the CNCA and utilize different coarray signal components to construct multiple Toeplitz matrices. Based on the constructed Toeplitz matrices, we further develop two direction-finding algorithms to achieve the decoupled estimation of the 2-D direction. Unlike the exiting approaches, the proposed two algorithms exploit more coarray output components, and hence, they have better direction-finding performance. Moreover, our algorithms can be applied to a larger number of nested subarrays in the CNCA. Numerical results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed algorithms in comparison to the exiting methods.