DOA estimation via sparse recovering from the smoothed covariance vector

A direction of arrival (DOA) estimation algorithm is proposed using the concept of sparse representation. In particular, a new sparse signal representation model called the smoothed covariance vector (SCV) is established, which is constructed using the lower left diagonals of the covariance matrix. DOA estimation is then achieved from the SCV by sparse recovering, where two distinguished error limit estimation methods of the constrained optimization are proposed to make the algorithms more robust. The algorithm shows robust performance on DOA estimation in a uniform array, especially for coherent signals. Furthermore, it significantly reduces the computational load compared with those algorithms based on multiple measurement vectors (MMVs). Simulation results validate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed algorithm.