Front-End Processing with Lens Antenna Arrays for Direction-of-Arrival Estimation

Spectral estimation and direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation is considered for discrete lens antenna array front ends. In this approach, when using the Multiple Signal Classification (MUSIC) algorithm, the dimension is reduced by the front end which performs spatial processing, resulting in increased computational speed and decreased computational load. As a specific example, simulations of a 33-element lens array with DOA estimation for 7 simultaneous sources shows that the computational load is reduced to 68% of that for a 33-element linear uniform array. In this paper, we consider the case of narrowband uncorrelated signals, and uniform spacing of receivers on the lens image surface, but the analysis can be extended to broadband non-uniform scenarios.