Joint delay and direction of arrivals estimation in mobile communications

Abstract

In this paper, we present a novel and precise way of estimating the direction and delay of arrivals in multipath environment for channel estimation purposes. Recently, super-resolution methods have been widely used for highresolution direction of arrival (DOA) or time difference of arrival (TDOA) estimation. The proposed algorithm, called JDTDOA, is applicable to space-time channel estimation for space-time processing systems that employ hybrid DOA/TDOA technology. The estimator is based on conventional MUSIC algorithm to find the DOA and uses a standard correlator along with spline interpolation to find the TDOA of each arrival. In the interest of estimating the channel's characteristics, each direction must be associated with its proper delay of arrival. To achieve this, we suggest a very simple and optimum beamforming by performing maximum variance distortionless response applied to each DOA found. The output at each DOA beamforming process gives the recovered signal from the relevant direction. A correlation is then made between each recovered signals which can be interpolated by cubic spline. The peak in correlation figure indicates the specific delay between the signal arrivals coming from the two considered direction.

The JDTDOA algorithm applied to signal recovery: a performance analysis

“…This method does not require any preamble. In order to retrieve each reflected and direct signal, we first estimate the space-time channel parameters using the joint estimation algorithm proposed in [4]. The directions of arrival (DOA) are estimated by the high-resolution MUSIC algorithm which uses projection over a reduced orthogonal space.…”

“…To do so, we first propose to estimate the space-time parameters of the incoming signals. For this matter, we use the JDTDOA (Joint Direction and Time Delay of Arrivals) algorithm recently developed [4]. In JDTDOA, the MVDR beamforming is used to retrieve a copy of the source signal.…”

“…The performance of the JDTDOA estimation algorithm was discussed in the prior article [4]. It is very precise for both DOAs and TDOAs in case of ISI between symbols and very low SNR.…”

“…This method does not need any preamble and covers delay spread with interference intersymbol (ISI) between symbols. The channel parameters estimation is done using a recent developed algorithm called JDT-DOA [4]. In this published work, we proposed an accurate and precise method to estimate and associate the time delay and direction of arrivals in multipath environments without the use of any preamble.…”

Joint Estimation of DOA and TDOA of Multiple Reflections in Mobile Communications

“…The algorithms require the preamble to recovery the time delays between each arrival. In [13], a method is proposed, which associates DOA from the MUSIC algorithm and TDOA from the correlator separatively. It considered multipath signals as independents sources, assumed the delays between the components are larger than the duration of autocorrelation of emitted signals.…”