A Novel 2-D DOA Estimation Method via Sparse L-Shaped Array

In this paper, a novel method for two-dimensional (2-D) direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation employing a sparse L-shaped array is proposed. The array composed of one traditional uniform linear array (ULA), one sparse ULA and an auxiliary sensor. In the proposed method, the elevation angles are estimated by two steps. The first step is to estimate the ambiguous elevation angle by the ESPRIT-like method. The second step is to remove the ambiguity by the proposed disambiguation procedure. Then, the azimuth angles are estimated by the elevation estimates and all the data of the cross-covariance matrix (CCM) without any palrmg procedures. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method provides a much better estimation accuracy than the existing methods with comparable computational complexity.