Abstract:

This paper presents a fast approach for estimation of Direction of Arrival (DOA) of coherent signals on a Uniform Circular Array (UCA). The mode excitation method is applied to transform the output signals of UCA in element space into a virtual Uniform Linear Array (ULA) in mode space. Then a special matrix is constructed using the characteristic of the array, and the DOA of coherent signals can be estimated according to ESPRIT method successfully. Spatial smoothing techniques and spectral peak searching are not needed in this method, so the computation is reduced. The proposed method is validated by computer simulation.

Key words: information processing technology, uniform circle array, coherent signals, mode excitation, virtual array, direction estimation