A fast algorithm for 2-D direction-of-arrival estimation

A computationally efficient method for two-dimensional direction-of-arrival estimation of multiple narrowband sources impinging on the far field of a planar array is presented. The key idea is to apply the propagator method which only requires linear operations but does not involve any eigendecomposition or singular value decomposition as in common subspace techniques such as MUSIC and ESPRIT. Comparing with a fast ESPRIT-based algorithm, it has a lower computational complexity particularly when the ratio of array size to the number of sources is large, at the expense of negligible performance loss. Simulation results are included to demonstrate the performance of the proposed technique. © 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.