Application of natural computing to the problem of estimating the direction of arrival

Author(s)

Levy Boccato

• Document type: Master's Dissertation
• Press: Campinas, SP.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Faculdade de Engenharia Elétrica e de Computação
• Defense date: 2010-12-07

Examining board members

Romis Ribeiro de Faissol Attux; Murilo Bellezoni Loiola; Fernando José Von Zuben

• Advisor: Romis Ribeiro de Faissol Attux; Amauri Lopes

Abstract

The problem of estimating the direction of arrival (DOA) of plane waves impinging on a uniform linear array of sensors, through the maximum likelihood (ML) criterion, requires the minimization of a cost function that is non-linear, non-quadratic, multimodal and variant with the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). This work deals with the application of natural computing algorithms as an alternative to the use of classical methods, such as MODE and MODEX, which are not capable of achieving the performance of the ML estimator in a wide range of SNR values. The simulations performed in different scenarios indicate that some of the studied algorithms can adequately estimate the angles of arrival. Finally, inspired by a proposal of noise filtering of the received data, we designed a procedure of sampling the search space: the frequency response of the filter which produces the maximal noise reduction is employed as the probability density function during the sampling process. The obtained results attest that this procedure tends to increase the efficiency of the considered algorithms in DOA estimation (AU)