Higher-order ESPRIT for localization of near-field sources: an asymptotic performance analysis

Most existing array processing techniques for estimating the directions of arrival or signal copy rely heavily on the plane-wave assumption of far-field sources. When the sources are located relatively close to the array, these techniques may no longer perform satisfactorily. We present an asymptotic performance analysis of a recently proposed ESPRIT-like method for passive localization of near-field sources. The algorithm, based on fourth-order cumulants, is formulated for observations collected from a single uniformly spaced linear array. We examine the least-squares version of the algorithm and derive the expressions for the asymptotic variances of the estimated directions of arrival and estimated ranges of the sources