Enhanced 2D-DOA Estimation for Large Spacing Three-Parallel Uniform Linear Arrays

Abstract

An enhanced two-dimensional direction of arrival (2D-DOA) estimation algorithm for large spacing three-parallel uniform linear arrays (ULAs) is proposed in this paper. Firstly, we use the propagator method (PM) to get the highly accurate but ambiguous estimation of directional cosine. Then, we use the relationship between the directional cosine to eliminate the ambiguity. This algorithm not only can make use of the elements of the three-parallel ULAs but also can utilize the connection between directional cosine to improve the estimation accuracy. Besides, it has satisfied estimation performance when the elevation angle is between 70° and 90° and it can automatically pair the estimated azimuth and elevation angles. Furthermore, it has low complexity without using any eigen value decomposition (EVD) or singular value decompostion (SVD) to the covariance matrix. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed algorithm.