Patent Document ID: 8031119
Application ID: 12511783
Patent Flag: 1

Claim One:
1. A method of estimating the angle of arrival of a target signal received by an array of antenna elements, comprising the steps of: (a) with a pair of receivers, simultaneously obtaining samples of a received target signal from multiple elements of an array of antenna elements; and (b) with a computer, processing the simultaneously obtained samples of the target signal to determine a maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) of the angle of arrival φ of the target signal by using the following equation: 
 φ MLE =argmax φ Re (α*β) wherein α is a complex vector that represents a phase difference associated with the angle of arrival that should be observed upon receipt of the signal by two particular antenna elements from which the samples are obtained; and β represents the phase difference that is observed upon receipt of the signal by the two particular antenna elements from which the samples are obtained; wherein when the target signal is unknown, β n =y* 2n−1 y 2n in the time domain and β n =Y* 2n−1 Y 2n in the frequency domain, wherein y 2n−1 and y 2n are complex N-tuple vectors representing the samples obtained from the nth simultaneously sampled pair of antenna elements and Y is a Fourier transform of y.