Performance analysis for near field source localization

In this paper we analyze the parameter estimation performance for source localization in the near field of a sensor array. More precisely, we focus on i) the minimum signal to noise ratio required to resolve two closely spaced near field sources (MSNR-NF) using the Smith criterion. As a by product we investigate ii) the asymptotic mean square error of the Deterministic Maximum Likelihood estimator for two near field sources using the deterministic Cramér-Rao bound (CRB). In both cases, we obtain closed-form expressions. Our approach has two advantages: 1) the computational cost for a large number of snapshots of a matrix-based CRB, and thus, for the MSNR-NF can be high while our approach offers low complexity and 2) some useful informations can be deduced from the behavior of the bound and the MSNR-NF.