Using Shaped Beam Patterns for Tracking

This communication presents a new direction-of-arrival based tracking method, using shaped beam patterns. The advantage of this method is that the direction of a signal can be estimated based on a single output (analog) beamformer, without having to scan over multiple angles. Simulations indicate that, although arrays consisting of 8 to 16 antennas are preferable, the minimum array size is 4. A single array can cover a scan angle of roughly 120 ° and the direction of arrival can be estimated with an RMS error of 2 ° .