Radar Target as Distributed Source for DOA Estimation

Collision avoidance systems for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) use radar equipment for target detection. In direction-of-arrival (DOA) antenna array estimation, the direction of a signal is usually assumed to be a point. If the target vehicle is near to the radar than direction of a signal is distributed due to its extension, however, DOA estimation methods based on the point source assumption may result in poor performance. In this paper, we consider aerial vehicle backscatter using ray tracing method and DOA estimation when the signal sources are distributed. Model for distributed source is proposed, and estimation methods are considered under this models.