Impact of experimental calibration on direction of arrival estimation

The subject of array calibration has received significant attention in recent years as it is increasingly recognized that undesired electromagnetic interactions, and more specifically mutual coupling between the array elements, can affect the array performance. However, it is currently unclear how the calibration should be performed to obtain the most accurate results and ensure the best performance. This paper attempts to answer this question by taking into consideration factors affecting both indoor and outdoor calibrations through full-wave numerical analysis. The performance of the multiple signal classification (MUSIC) direction of arrival estimation algorithm is evaluated in different calibration scenarios and techniques are suggested for improvement.