The paper proposes a fast method for the multidimensional parameter estimation of a polarization-sensitive array. Compared with conventional methods (e.g., MUSIC algorithm), the proposed method applies an iterative approach based on Newton's method to obtain joint estimation results instead of a spectral search and dimension reduction. It also extends the original Newton method to the 4D scale using the Hessian matrix. To reduce the complexity of establishing the aim function, Nystrom's method is applied to process the covariance matrix. A new threshold is also proposed to select the results, which can accomplish the parameter estimation with a small number of iterations while guaranteeing a high estimation accuracy. Finally, the proposed algorithm is analyzed in detail and the numerical simulations of various algorithms are compared to verify its effectiveness.
Keywords: Newton’s method; joint parameter estimation; polarization-sensitive arrays; threshold function.