An Fluid Antenna Array-Enabled DOA Estimation Method: End-Fire Effect Suppression

TL;DR

This paper introduces a fluid antenna array architecture that dynamically reconfigures to suppress the end-fire effect, significantly improving the accuracy of DOA estimation in challenging scenarios.

Contribution

It proposes a novel fluid antenna array design combined with the MUSIC algorithm to effectively mitigate the end-fire effect in DOA estimation.

Findings

High-precision DOA estimation in challenging end-fire regions

Effective suppression of the end-fire effect

Outperforms traditional fixed array methods

Abstract

Direction of Arrival (DOA) estimation serves as a critical sensing technology poised to play a vital role in future intelligent and ubiquitous communication systems. Despite the development of numerous mature super-resolution algorithms, the inherent end-fire effect problem in fixed antenna arrays remains inadequately addressed. This work proposed a novel array architecture composed of fluid antennas. By exploiting the spatial reconfigurability of their positions to equivalently modulate the array steering vector and integrating it with the classical MUSIC algorithm, this approach achieved high-precision DOA estimation. Simulation results demonstrated that the proposed method delivers outstanding estimation performance even in highly challenging end-fire regions.