Two-dimensional Fourier transform for joint frequency-AOA estimation

The determination of the signal's angle of arrival (AOA) is crucial for civilian and military applications. Popular AOA determination techniques such as MUSIC are often calculation intensive and require a priori knowledge about signal frequency and incoming signals need to have the same frequency. In this paper, an efficient joint frequency-AOA determination method based on a 2-dimensional fast Fourier transform (2D-FFT) is proposed and investigated. The major advantages of the proposed method lie in its simplicity and the availability of efficient hardware/software designed for FFT calculation. Simulation results demonstrate the validity of the proposed method and its advantage over MUSIC in terms of calculation efficiency and better noise immunity. The results show that the proposed method outperforms MUSIC in a low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) environment (SNR < - 4 dB) and that it requires CPU time merely a fraction of what is required by MUSIC. Therefore, the proposed method provides a feasible approach for realizing AOA detection in a real-time processing device.