Fast Joint TOA and AOA Estimation for Multipath Signals Based on Improved Propagator Method

Angle of arrival (AOA) parameters cannot be estimated when the number of array elements is smaller than the number of multipath. But time of arrival (TOA) and AOA parameters can be estimated by two-dimensional multiple signal classification (2D-MUSIC) algorithm, however, it needs much more time to complete the two-dimensional spectral peak search, which makes it difficult to apply in practice. Aiming at solving those problems, a novel fast joint delay and angle estimation for multipath signals based on improved propagator method is proposed. TOA and AOA parameters are all obtained by closed-form solution, and the two-dimensional parameters can be automatically paired. The theoretical analysis and simulation results show that, compared with the existing traditional super-resolution algorithm, the proposed algorithm can not only significantly reduce the computational complexity, but also realize the high precision parameter estimation when the number of multipath is more than the number of array elements.