kept constant at 50A.

The barrier thickness is changing from

50 to l 0 0 A . We found, in agreement with the above analysis,
that increasing the thickness of barrier induces a dramatic rise
in the valley current with temperature. By contrast, the peak
current variations are not pronounced. Therefore, 0,can be
controlled from 240 to 480K by a proper choice of L,.
For a comparison with experiment, the temperature dependencies of current voltage characteristics were measured for
two different wafers grown by molecular-beam epitaxy. The
two samples are differentiated essentially by the barrier thicknesses L,. The growth sequence of sample A with L , = 50A
has been described e l ~ e w h e r eThe
. ~ DBH of sample B is quite
com arable to that reported in Reference 4. It consists of two
1001 AI,.,,Ga,.,,As
barriers and a 50A GaAs quantum well.
Typical experimental results of the variations of the peak and
valley current density with temperature are shown in Fig. 2.

References
CHOU,s. v., WOLAK,
E., and HARRIS, J. s.: Resonant tunneling of
electrons of one or two degrees of freedom, Appl. Phys. Lett.,
1988,52, p. 657
VASSELL, M. o., LEE,
J., and LOCKWOOD,
H. F.: Multibarrier tunneling in Ga, _,AI,As/GaAs heterostructures, J. Appl. Phys., 1983,
54, p. 5206
LIPPENS,
D., and MOUNAIX,
P.: Small signal impedance of
GaAs-AI,Ga, _,As resonant tunnelling heterostructure at microwave frequency, Electron. Lett., 1988, 24, p. 1180
VODJDANI,
N., CHEVOIR,
F., mohu$ D., mm P., COSTARD,
E., and
D E L A I s.:
~ Photoluminescenceand space-chargedistribution in
a double-barrier diode under operation, Appl. Phys. Lett., 1989,
55, p. 1528
VANBFSIEN,
o., and LIPPENS, D.: DC and AC analysis of high
current double barrier structures, to be published in Solid-State
Electron.

CHEVOIR,
F., and VINTER,
B. : Calculation of phonon-assisted tunneling and valley current in a double barrier diode, Appl. Phys.
Lett., 1989, 55, p. 1859

BEARING ESTIMATION OF COHERENT

SOURCES BY CIRCULAR SPATIAL
MODULATION AVERAGING (CSMA)
TECHNIQUE
Indexing terms. Signal processing, Algorithms, Matrix algebra
100

200

300

LO0

temperature, K

A novel circular array spatial smoothing technique that does

not reduce the effectiveaperture of an array is proposed. Its

ability to estimate the incident directions of coherent sources

is improved, as compared to the conventional spatial
smoothing technique and modified spatial smoothing algorithm.

Fig. 2 Measured current/uoltage characteristics against temperature for

two samples changing the barrier thicknessfrom 100 to 50 A

The lines are drawn only to connect the data points

The NDR vanishes at -260K and - W K , respectively, by
varying the barrier thickness from 100 to 50A. These results
are in rather good agreement with the theoretical prediction
(-200K for L, = L, = 100A).4 Therefore, it is found that the
temperature limit at which NDR vanishes can be correctly
predicted by simulations relying on a coherent tunnelling
transmission calculation. As a consequence, this result suggests that the contribution of inelastic scatterings is only secIn other words, the fact that
ondary for the derivation of 0,.
thick barrier DBH do not exhibit NDR at room temperature
is not attributable to the enhancement of scattering inside the
well. However, it is worth mentioning that to describe the
general shapes of experimental curves, in particular the
enhancement of peak current and more realistic peak/valley
ratios a t low temperatures, a partial loss of coherency and the
role played by the emitter accumulation layer have to be
In conclusion, we have shown that a temperature limit 0,
directly related to structural parameters can be derived from
tunnelling-current analysis. Confidence in estimation of 0,
can be. provided through numerical simulations and comparison with experiment.
Acknowledgments: The authors thank J. L. Lorriaux for
growing the DB heterostructures, and A. Fattorini for preparation of sample A. We wish to thank Thomson-CSF laboratories for supplying thick barrier devices (sample B). This
work is supported by the Ministere de la Recherche et de
IEnseignement Supkrieur.
L. DE SAINT POL
0. VANBESIEN
D. LIPPENS

18th January 1990

Centre Hyperjrequences et Semiconducteurs

U.A. 287 CNRS-Birt. P4
Uniuersiti des Sciences et Techniques de Lille Flandres Artois
59655 Villeneuue dAscq Cedex, France

ELECTRONIC LETTERS

1st March 1990

Vol. 26

No. 5

Introduction: Linear aperature arrays for source direction estimation in a coherent environment have been extensively
analysed.- In contrast, the analysis of a circular array for
resolving coherent signals has yet to evolve to the same point.
In this letter, we present a novel circular array processing
technique that can resolve coherent sources without decreasing the effective aperture of the array processor. In our technique, the array elements are mounted on a rotating circular
disc and the covariance matrix is averaged over a certain time
interval T to estimate the direction of arrival of the coherent
sources.
Circular spatial modulation averaging (CSMA) technique: Consider an N-element circular array structure with radius r. The
angular spacing between any two adjacent array elements is
Qd. The direction vector of the ith incident signal when the
array elements are at their respective reference angles is given
by

d, = [&W

@(Oil
1

..., @ d 8 8 ) ] T

(1)

where
&(&)

2n
1

= - 2r

d
sin (k - 1) a2

$J0,) is the phase difference between the kth array element

and the reference array element (k = 1) for the incident signal
at 0,.
The circular array is rotating with an angular velocity w as
shown in Fig. 1. The incident signal at each array element is
sampled only when the array elements are within f c r from

343

their respective reference angles. The curvature of the circular

array within *ao is assumed to be linear (or straight). Hence,

analyse the conditions under which the coherent sources can

will be ensured.
be decorrelated so that nonsingularity of
Eqn. 11 can be rewritten as

a,

a, =
...

.pqlaq.lJq,

where pij is the correlation coefficient between the ith and the
jth sources, ai is the standard deviation of the ith source, and
J..=

and
2rr

r$,(m,n ) = - ru
I
x {sin COi - (m- l p , ] - sin

Fig. 1 Circular spatial modulation array structure

the direction matrix of the incident signals at time t is written

as
(3)

Ddt) = 0, R(0

[ej - (n - lp,,]}

(16)

The ability to decorrelate coherent sources is now dependent

on Ui,(m, n). U i l m , n) is a sinc function and I U,,(rn, n)I is
always less than unity as long as ri,@,n) is chosen such that
I ri,(m, n) I > 0. Hence, if I Ui,(m, n) I is not equal to unity, then
the correlation between the sources will not be perfect.
However, coherent sources can only be totally decorrelated
when Iri,(m, n)I is approaching infinity. Our simulation
analysis has shown that if the following conditions can be
satisfied, then the CSMA technique can resolve the direction
of arrival from the coherent sources without any difficulty:
(a) To avoid incident direction ambiguity, the relation
between r, 1 and admust satisfy the condition

where
0, = [diag (dl),diag (d2), . .., diag (d,)]

2r .
1
sin - -

(b) To ensure that I ui,(m, n ) I is less than unity, we have

(19)

a>0"

(c) To constrain a such that the curvature of the circular array

within & a degrees is approximately linear

sin a - a
i0.001 or 0.1%
a

Note: 6(t) is the circular modulation function, where

2u/T = o. Define the observed signal vector at the array
sensors by
X(t) = D,(t)S

+ N = 0,R(t)S + N

(9)

The covariance matrix of the observed signal vector is given

by

R,, = flX(t)X(t)+ 1

+ R,,

= D,flR(t)SS+R(t)+]D:

(10)

Hence, the modified signal covariance matrix is defined to be

a, = I$R(t)SS+R(t)+]

(11)

and
R,,

= 0,

a, 0: + R ,

-100

(12)

-50

0
50
incident angle, degree

100

/649121

If the covariance matrix R,, is nonsingular, then the high

resolution technique can be used to obtain estimates of the
direction of arrival of the incident sources. We shall now

Fig. 2 Comparison of high-resolution eigemtructure techniques

CSMA; - - - -conventional

344

ELECTRONIC LETTERS

1st March 1990

Vol. 26

No. 5

Simulation results; The proposed spatial smoothing technique

was simulated using a four-element circular array. Three perfectly correlated souroes were simulated at incident angles of
- 15, 10 and 30, respectively. The angular spacing between
any two adjacent array elements was 1.5. The ratio r/A was
19.1 and a was set to 3.0. A comparison of the resolving
capability of the conventional high-resolution eigenstructure
technique and our CSMA high-resolution eigenstructure technique is given in Fig. 2. It was found that, in the case of
coherent signals, our proposed technique has a higher resolving power than the conventional technique.
U r d January 1990

B. L. LIM
S . K. HUI

References
1

LIM, B. L.: Fkaring estimation of coherent sources by spatial

modulating and in-place reversal averaging technique, Electron.

Lett., 1989,25, (15), pp. 942-944

G., and KOPP, L.: Adaptinty to background noise
spatial coherence for high resolution passive methods. Proc. IEEE
ICASSP, 1980, Denver, Colorado, USA, pp. 307-310
3 TIE-m,
s., WAX, M., and KAILATH, T.: On spatial smoothing for
direction of arrival estimation of coherent signals, IEEE Trans.,
1985, ASP-33, (4), pp. 8 W 8 1 I
4 WILLIAMS, R. T., PRASAD, s., MAHALANABIS A. K., and SIBUL, L. H.:
An improved spatial smoothing technique for bearing estimation
in a multipath environment, IEEE Trans., 1988, 36, (4), pp.

2 BIENVENU,

42-32

Defence Science Organisation

20, Science Park Driw, Singapore Science Park, Singapore 05 I I

Y. C. LIM
Department of Ekctrical Engineering
National University of Singapore
Kent Ridge, Singapore 05II

Erratum
HALL, R. c., and MOSIG, J. R.: Rigorousfeed model for coaxially

fed microstrip antenna, Electron. Lett., 1990, 26,(l), pp. 64-66

Eqn. 4 should read as follows:

ELECTRONIC LE77ER.S

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1st Manh 1990 Vol. 26

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