Improved compensation for the mutual coupling effect in a dipole array for direction finding

Abstract

A new and practical method is proposed to compensate for the mutual coupling effect in a dipole array deployed for direction finding. This method does not require either the current distributions on the antenna elements or the elevation angles of the incoming signals to be known. A new definition of mutual impedance is introduced to characterize the effect due to mutual coupling between dipole elements. The new mutual impedances are calculated based on an estimated current distribution. It is shown that the current method has a significantly better ability to compensate for the mutual coupling effect than previous methods. Computer simulations using the MUSIC algorithm are provided to demonstrate this method.