DOA estimation for Cylindrical Antenna Arrays using Cramer-Rao Lower Bound Analysis

The estimation of the direction of arrival (DOA) for receiving cylindrical antenna arrays is presented. The analysis uses the Cramer-Rao lower bound (CRLB), which provides the best unbiased estimation for minimizing the residual noise. First, the CRLB for conformal surfaces is derived. Then the method is applied to case studies to gauge the difference in the performance of cylindrical arrays compared to a planar array. The presented approach can help designers of cylindrical conformal arrays to optimize the antenna performance.