DOA estimation algorithm based on DFT and multiple regression

Abstract

In order to address the problem that the direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation is restricted by the number of array elements, this study comes up with a novel DOA estimation algorithm based on discrete-Fourier-transformation (DFT) and multiple regression, which focuses on the direct data domain from each array element rather than the traditional covariance domain of the whole array. In this algorithm, the authors regard each channel of the array signal model as an independent form of multiple regression and achieve the DOA by estimating the regression coefficient of the reconstructed source signal from each array element one by one iteratively. In addition, the DOAs estimated from the multiple array elements are averaged to improve the accuracy by exploiting the asymptotic normality. This algorithm is proposed, modelled, and developed theoretically at first. Then the capabilities that the authors' algorithm can estimate not only the very close DOAs since they distinguish the irrelevant sources by the DFT on temporal frequency but also the DOAs when the number of sources is larger than that of array elements are fully demonstrated by simulations. Furthermore, no requirement for the known number of sources brings the algorithm broader application foreground.