Asymptotic performance analysis of direction finding algorithms based on fourth-order cumulants

The main purpose of this contribution is to derive and work out closed form expressions of the asymptotic covariance of MUSIC-like direction-of-arrival estimates based on two fourth-order cumulant matrices: the diagonal slice and the contracted quadricovariance. This is compared to the standard covariance based MUSIC estimate establishing on a rational basis the domain of applicability of higher-order statistics for DOA estimation.In particular, the exact impact of the noise variance and of the dynamic range of the sources in investigated. This asymptotic performance analysis is achieved within a general framework, which we believe to be of general interest.