Reconfigurable Coded Holographic Surfaces for Compressive Channel Characterization

Accurate direction of arrival (DoA) estimations are of great importance for channel characterization and, in particular, for beam steering. In this regard, the use of computational imaging (CI) based solutions, such as reconfigurable coded holographic surfaces, can result in a significant hardware simplification with respect to array-based solutions. This contribution analyses the impact on the accuracy of DoA estimations of the number of measurement modes (i.e., the number of significantly distinct radiation patterns considered in a reconfigurable holographic surface) and the aperture size. Results show that medium size apertures and a moderate number of measurement modes enable accurate DoA estimations in the context of a single far-field source, and also when multiple sources are present. Hence, this illustrates the potential of CI-based solutions for DoA estimation.