Estimation of 2-D DOA for Coherently Distributed Non-circular Sources

The paper presents a novel estimator for two-dimensional (2-D) direction-of-arrival (DOA) of coherently distributed (CD) non-circular signals utilizing two uniform linear arrays (ULAs). The proposed method firstly divides the two ULAs into three subarrays, thus three output matrices can be obtained and the generalized steering vector has the rotational invariance characteristic. Then extend the array output matrices using the non-circularity of the signals, and the extended generalized steering vector still has the rotational invariance characteristic. At last, the central DOAs can be calculated by ESPRIT-like method. This paper also provides examples to validate the performance of the novel estimator. Simulation results validated that the proposed estimator owns the best performance compared with two existing methods.