DOA Estimation of Coherent Sources Using Coprime Array via Atomic Norm Minimization

Abstract

In this letter, we develop an effective algorithm for direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation of coherent sources with coprime arrays. Firstly, we generate a virtual uniform linear array (ULA) through coprime array interpolation. Subsequently, we derive an augmented noise-free covariance matrix that is constructed using the entries of the covariance matrix of the virtual ULA outputs, and recover the Hermitian Toeplitz matrix by solving an atomic norm minimization problem with multiple measurement vectors. Finally, the DOAs of coherent sources are estimated via MUSIC spectral search. Unlike the state-of-the-art approach, our algorithm is insensitive to the phase differences among sources. Numerical results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed algorithm over several existing techniques.