Broadband signal DOA estimation based on two-sided correlation transformation using array manifold interpolation

Abstract

The two-sided correlation transformation (TCT) algorithm is widely used to estimate the direction of arrival (DOA) for broadband signals. However, the traditional TCT algorithm requires DOA pre-estimation, which results in a high computational complexity and poor performance under low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) conditions. To address these challenges, an improved TCT algorithm based on array manifold interpolation (AMI) is proposed in this paper, which utilised the AMI method to decompose the array manifold matrix and reconstruct the signal covariance matrix. It aims to obtain a DOA-independent focusing transformation matrix, thereby avoiding DOA pre-estimation. The simulation and lake experiment results are compared with the traditional TCT algorithms. It shows that the proposed algorithm can achieve higher DOA estimation accuracy and better angular resolution even in low SNR environments by fully utilising the information within the whole bandwidth of the target while reducing computational complexity.