Comparison of various mutual coupling compensation methods in receiving antenna arrays

Various mutual coupling compensation (MCC) methods have been proposed in the literature in the last 25 years. Most methods involve the calculation of a coupling matrix estimating the mutual coupling in a receiving antenna array. The coupling matrix is subsequently taken into account in the signal processing to generally perform beamforming and direction of arrival (DOA) estimation. The published methods to this date have only been evaluated for narrowband operation. Therefore, a wideband comparison of currently available methods is presented in this paper to concisely formulate important guidelines related to MCC methods. The results are useful for receiving antenna arrays operating over wide and narrow bandwidths.