FPGA-based real-time implementation for direction-of-arrival estimation

Abstract

Direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation of radio signals is of utmost importance in many commercial and military applications. In this study, the authors propose an efficient field-programmable gate array (FPGA) architecture for implementing a recently published DOA estimation algorithm. This algorithm estimates DOAs by making use of QR decomposition of the received data matrix of four- and eight-element uniform linear antenna arrays. The hardware implementation has been thoroughly analysed and experimentally validated by building a real-time prototype of the DOA estimation algorithm. The experimental results show good agreement between DOA estimates obtained by the prototype and true values.

Keywords

• direction-of-arrival estimation
• field programmable gate arrays
• linear antenna arrays
• FPGA-based real-time implementation
• uniform linear antenna arrays
• DOA estimation algorithm
• field-programmable gate array architecture
• radio signals
• direction-of-arrival estimation