Improved Polynomial Rooting of Capon's Algorithm to Estimate the Direction-of-Arrival in Smart Array Antenna

Abstract Direction of arrival algorithms are used, in general, to estimate a number of incident plane waves on the antenna array and their angles of incidence. In this paper, firstly, a new approach representing a more extensive version of the conventional Capon method is proposed. The study employs the root-Capon approach based on cross-correlation matrix in extracting the estimated direction-of-arrival of some number of signals to a given uniform linear array (ULA) antenna system. Secondly, a simple modification on the antenna element's number is employed for the Capon and the proposed approach to obtain more performances. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is verified through numerical simulation examples, and it is shown that the root version of Capon method can provide more accurate angle estimation with less computational complexity than conventional Capon algorithm. Similarly, it is found also that the used modification plays a significant role in the performance's improvement of Capon and its variant approaches.