R-dimensional ESPRIT-type algorithms for strictly second-order non-circular sources and their performance analysis

Abstract

High-resolution parameter estimation algorithms designed to exploit the prior knowledge of incident signals from strictly second-order (SO) non-circular (NC) sources allow for a lower estimation error and can detect twice as many sources. In this paper, we derive the R-D NC Standard ESPRIT and the R-D NC Unitary ESPRIT algorithms that provide a significantly better performance compared to their original versions for arbitrary source signals. They are applicable to shift-invariant R-D antenna arrays and do not require a centro-symmetric array structure. Moreover, we present a first-order asymptotic performance analysis of the proposed algorithms, which is based on the estimation error of the signal subspace arising from the noisy measurements. The derived expressions for the resulting parameter estimation error are explicit in the noise realizations and asymptotic in the effective signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), i.e., the results become exact for either high SNRs or a large sample size. We also provide mean squared error (MSE) expressions, where only the assumptions of a zero mean and finite SO moments of the noise are required, but no assumptions about its statistics are necessary. As a main result, we analytically prove that the asymptotic performance of both R-D NC ESPRIT-type algorithms is identical in the high effective SNR regime. Finally, a case study shows that no improvement from strictly non-circular sources can be achieved in the special case of a single source