Virtual-Subarray-Based Angle-of-Arrival Estimation in Analog Antenna Arrays

Angle-of-arrival (AoA) estimation is a challenging problem for analog antenna arrays. Typical algorithms are based on beam scanning which can be time-consuming. In this letter, we propose a virtual-subarray based recursive AoA estimation scheme that can get an AoA estimate from every two measurements and recursively improve the performance by updating beamforming weights with soft probability-based information. Simulation results validate the high efficiency of the proposed scheme, demonstrating its superiority for initial AoA estimation in analog arrays.