Direction of Arrival Estimation With Low Resolution Quantised Data: A Taxonomy and Survey
Yasin Azhdari, Mahmoud Farhang · IET Radar Sonar & Navigation · 2025
ABSTRACT This paper presents a comprehensive survey of Direction of Arrival (DoA) estimation techniques that utilise one‐bit and low‐resolution data. We delve into various approaches, including direct application of quantised data to existing DoA estimators and reconstruction‐based methods, such as covariance matrix reconstruction via the arcsine law and recovery of noiseless unquantised measurements. Low‐resolution quantisation is increasingly essential in modern communication systems, especially massive MIMO systems, due to its benefits in terms of power consumption, cost and system complexity. One‐bit quantisation, in particular, has gained significant attention in wireless communication and cellular and sensor networks. We conduct a thorough evaluation of different methods and algorithms under various scenarios to identify optimal techniques for different conditions. Our analysis includes comparisons of different performance metrics and computational complexity. We also investigate the effect of increasing the number of quantiser output levels on DoA estimation performance. Our findings demonstrate that the Lloyd‐Max quantiser consistently outperforms the maximum entropy quantiser for a higher number of quantisation levels. Additionally, we compare the performance of direct use of quantised data with quantised measurement recovery approach at higher quantisation levels. Our results suggest that direct use of quantised data is generally a more efficient and effective approach in such scenarios.