Efficient Hybrid DOA Estimation for Massive Uniform Linear Array

This letter presents an efficient hybrid direction of arrival (DOA) estimation scheme for massive uniform linear array. In this scheme, the DOA estimator based on a discrete Fourier transform (DFT) is first applied to acquire coarse initial DOA estimates for single data snapshot. And then, the fine DOA is accurately estimated through using the iterative search estimator within a very small region. It iteratively searches for correct DOA vector by minimizing the objective function using a Taylor series approximation of the DOA vector with the one initially estimated. Since the proposed scheme does not need to perform eigen-decomposition and spectrum search while maintaining better DOA estimates, it also has low complexity and real-time capability. Simulation results are presented to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed scheme.