Modified particle swarm optimization structure approach to direction of arrival estimation

This study considers the problem of estimating the direction-of-arrival (DOA) for code-division multiple access (CDMA) signals. In this type of problem, the associated cost function of the DOA estimation is generally a computationally-expensive and highly-nonlinear optimization problem. A fast convergence of the global optimization algorithm is therefore required to attain results within a short amount of time. In this paper, we propose a new application of the modify particle swarm optimization (MPSO) structure to achieve a global optimal solution with a fast convergence rate for this type of DOA estimation problem. The MPSO uses a first-order Taylor series expansion of the objective function to address the issue of enhanced PSO search capacity for finding the global optimum leads to increased performance. The first-order Taylor series approximates the spatial scanning vector in terms of estimating deviation results in and reducing to a simple one-dimensional optimization problem and the estimating deviation has the tendency to fly toward a better search area. Thus, the estimating deviation can be used to update the velocity of the PSO. Finally, several numerical examples are presented to illustrate the design procedure and to confirm the performance of the proposed method. (C) 2012 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.