Direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation is always a hotspot research in the fields of radar, sonar, communication and so on. And uniform circular arrays (UCAs) are more attractive in the context of DOA estimation since their symmetrical structures have potential to provide two directions coverage. This paper proposed a new DOA estimation method for UCAs via virtual subarray beamforming technique. The method would provide an acceptable DOA estimate even if the number of sources is great than the number of array elements. Also, the performance of the proposed method would hold good when the snapshot length or the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is small. Simulations show that the proposed technique offers significantly improved estimation resolution, capacity, and accuracy relative to the existing techniques.
DOA Estimation of Near-Field Broadband Signals Using Uniform Circular Arrays
