Direction of Arrival Estimation Based on Fourth-order Cumulant Using Propagator Method

In this paper direction-of-arrival estimation (DOA) of multiple narrow-band sources, based on higher-order statistics using propagator, is presented. This technique uses fourth-order cumulants of the received array data instead of second-order statistics (autocovariance) and then the so-called propagator approach is used to estimate the DOA of the sources. The propagator is a linear operator which only depends on the array steering vectors and which can be easily extracted from the received array data. But it does not require any eigendecomposition of the cumulant matrix of the received data like MUSIC algorithm. Computer simulations are carried out to compare the performance of the proposed method to those of methods based on auto-covariance using MUSIC and propagator algorithms.