Instantaneous direction of arrival measurements in mobile radio channels using virtual circular array antennas

Two methods for the estimation of direction of arrival in mobile radio channels by means of a virtual uniform circular array are presented and experimentally validated. The methods rely on the MUSIC algorithm and can be applied for measurements in the mm-wave bands (6-100 GHz) as required for future 5G systems. They are capable of measurement cycles of up to 100 Hz which are very short in comparison of state-of-the-art approaches. Thus the approaches are suitable to collect a high number of channel realizations even in time-variant outdoor environments. With respect to the verification measurements at 28 GHz, a modular instrument based measurement setup is introduced.