Reduced Dimension Based Two-Dimensional DOA Estimation with Full DOFs for Generalized Co-Prime Planar Arrays

In this paper, we investigate the problem of two-dimensional (2D) direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation for generalized co-prime planar arrays. The classic multiple signal classification (MUSIC)-based methods can provide a superior estimation performance, but suffer from a tremendous computational burden caused by the 2D spectral search. To this end, we reduce the 2D problem into a one-dimensional (1D) one and propose a reduced dimension partial spectral search estimation method, which can compress the search region into a small 1D sector. Moreover, the proposed method can utilize the full information of the entire array without degrees-of-freedom loss. Furthermore, an iterative approach is also proposed to reduce complexity and improve performance. Simulation results show that the proposed methods can provide improved performance with substantially reduced complexity, as compared to other state-of-the-art methods.