Conditions for unambiguous source location using polarization diverse arrays

Abstract

As array processing becomes more mature, interest has grown in the use of polarization diverse arrays for both direction finding (DF) and signal copy. However, little has been written on the maximum number of source bearings which can be unambiguously estimated with a polarization diverse array of N antennas. This paper gives necessary conditions for the number of antennas needed to unambiguously estimate a given number of polarized sources, which may also have multipath components, for typical polarizations. In addition, the results of testing a six channel co-located polarization HF array are presented. The signal environments consisted of both correlated and uncorrelated signals. The results of these tests are compared to the theoretical bounds.