Direction-Of-Arrival Estimation For Coherently Distributed Sources Via Symmetric Uniform Linear Array

A novel algorithm is proposed for the direction of-arrival (DOA) estimation of coherently distributed (CD) sources. Based on the symmetric property of the uniform linear array (ULA) geometry, the DOA can be estimated by a one-dimensional peak search without estimating the distribution parameters, where N independent CD sources can be distinguished with a ULA of 2N + 1 elements. Compared with the existing algorithms, our proposed algorithm achieves higher element utilization rate with lower computational complexity. Numerical simulation results demonstrate our proposed algorithm provides an improved performance over the generalized eigenvalue decomposition (GEVD) algorithm.