Cramer Rao Lower Bound (CRLB) and Ambiguity Function for Planar Antenna Array with Antenna Radiation Pattern Consideration

Direction-of-arrival estimation is one of the most important tasks in adaptive antenna array systems. In designing such systems, the goal is achieving the best direction finding performance with minimum number of elements. For studying the direction-of-arrival performance in antenna arrays, the Cramer-Rao Lower Bound (CRLB) method is a reasonable approach. With accurate signal reception modeling in antenna arrays, one can be reached out more accurate CRLB performance. Concerning real antenna radiation pattern for every element of antenna array that is achieved via electromagnetic simulation software and inserting in the system signal reception model, CRLB behavior analysis of a real antenna array that perform direction-of-Arrival estimation algorithm can be done. In this paper, the CRLB study of a typical 4-elements GPS antenna array at L1 frequency band is done. Furthermore, the ambiguity resolution performance of this antenna array with full signal reception modeling is demonstrated.