D. N. Kirillov - Post-graduate Student, Lobachevsky State University of Nizhny Novgorod. E-mail: dtm-06@yandex.ru
V. A. Odnosevtsev - Senior Teacher, Lobachevsky State University of Nizhny Novgorod. E-mail: ivdn5@yahoo.com
D. N. Ivlev - Ph.D. (Phys.-Math.), Associate Professor, Lobachevsky State University of Nizhny Novgorod. E-mail: ivlev@rf.unn.ru
I. Ya. Orlov - Dr.Sc. (Eng.), Professor, Lobachevsky State University of Nizhny Novgorod. E-mail: orlov@rf.unn.ru
A. P. Evseev - Head of Laboratory of Radio Engineering Department, Lobachevsky State University of Nizhny Novgorod. E-mail: evseevap@mail.ru
A. V. Smirnov - Head of Department of branch of JSC "Azimut" (Nizhny Novgorod). E-mail: SmirnovAlex73@mail.ru

Antenna arrays (AA) are used for solving the problem of determining of angular coordinates of radio signal source in modern radio systems. High demands are made to them to discriminate sources spaced on angular coordinate less then for width of antenna pattern. Also the demand is made to work in real-time mode. To solve these problems numerous methods of high resolution have been developed in addition to the classical method of maximum likelihood (ML). The main difficulties during use of the specified methods are necessity of a priori knowledge of number of radiation sources which should be mutually uncorrelated. In this paper the new iterative method (IM) for estimating the angular coordinates of sources of electromagnetic radiation, described in detail previously is investigated. Comparative research of IM with the maximum likelihood method and direct-inverse linear prediction (DILP) method for AA with 30 elements is carried out. The results of statistical simulation are as follows: when there is one source of radiation, angle estimation by all the methods is reliable; when there are two sources of radiation, the angle estimate has systematic bias for IM and DILP, which depends on coordinates of the sources; when there are three sources of radiation, application of IM is reasonable when signal-to-noise ratio is greater than 15 dB. Analysis results indicate the possibility of using of the IM in real-time systems for measurement of angular coordinates of 2-3 radiation sources at the values of signal-to-noise ratio greater than 15 dB. As a result of the comparative analysis, the efficiency of IM which is comparable with a scanning approach and surpassing DILP method in many situations, and also computing efficiency of IM have been established.