Low Complexity AoA Estimation with Planar Electromagnetic Lens Arrays

This paper describes the problem of angle of arrival (AoA) estimation with planar electromagnetic (EM) lens arrays. Planar EM lens arrays exhibit some implementation advantages if compared with dielectric lenses such as light weight and low cost, making them a very attractive solution for different applications. Although several AoA estimation algorithms and methods have been recently proposed, most part of the literature does not deal with the case of planar lens, and an analysis of EM lens array signal models reveals the impossibility to apply methodologies developed for other kind of EM lenses to this case. Therefore, this work develops novel algorithms for AoA estimation with planar EM lens arrays. Moreover, the proposed methods not only have a very low computational complexity, but also employ only signal energies, leading to a great implementation simplification. Numerical results are also shown to demonstrate the accuracy of the proposed methods.