Broadband DOA Estimation Based on Nested Arrays

Direction of arrival (DOA) estimation is a crucial problem in electronic reconnaissance. A novel broadband DOA estimation method utilizing nested arrays is devised in this paper, which is capable of estimating the frequencies and DOAs of multiple narrowband signals in broadbands, even though they may have different carrier frequencies. The proposed method converts the DOA estimation of multiple signals with different frequencies into the spatial frequency estimation. Then, the DOAs and frequencies are pair matched by sparse recovery. It is possible to significantly increase the degrees of freedom (DOF) with the nested arrays and the number of sources can be more than that of sensor array. In addition, the method can achieve high estimation precision without the two-dimensional search process in frequency and angle domain. The validity of the proposed method is verified by theoretic analysis and simulation results.