Performance Analysis of Two Kinds of Uniform Circular Arrays

The performance of the directions-of-arrival (DOA) estimation is a strong function of array geometry configuration. Nowadays the Uniform Circular Arrays (UCA) arouse more and more attention due to their remarkable characteristics. In this paper, we derive the ambiguity formulation, the resolution and Cramer-Rao Lower Bound (CRLB) functions on the basis of the study of data model, the radiation pattern and the array structures. Then the influence factors on the two kinds of UCA´s angle ambiguity characteristic, such as the radius, the numbers of array elements and the elevation are systematically studied. In this paper we also systematically study the factors that can influence the resolution and CRLB´s values. The paper concludes by demonstrating the simulations that the theoretical analysis is certified correct.