Performance Analysis of Interferometer Algorithm under Phase Measurement Error

Abstract

Direction finding has been extensively studied over the past decades and a number of algorithms have been developed. In direction finding, theoretic performance prediction is a fundamental problem. This paper addresses the performance analysis issue of interferometer-based 2D angle of arrival estimation using uniform circular array (UCA). We propose an analytic method for performance analysis of interferometer in the presence of Gaussian or uniform error in phase measurement of incident signal on each sensor. The analytic mean square error (MSE), which is approximately equal to the MSE of actual interferometer-based DOA estimation, is derived via Taylor expansion and approximation. The derived analytic MSE is useful for predicting how the MSE of the interferometer-based DOA estimation algorithm is dependent on the phase measurement error.