2D DOA Estimation of Coherently Distributed Sources for Planar Arrays Based on Blind Signal Separation

A novel method is presented to estimate the direction-of-arrival (DOA) of coherently distributed (CD) sources for planar arrays. In the proposed method, the two-dimensional (2D) angular parameters are obtained by making use of the estimated generalized array manifold matrix, which is separated from the received observation data based on blind signal separation algorithm. The proposed method offers a number of advantages. First, the 2D central DOAs and angular spread variances can be estimated simultaneously. Second, the deterministic angular distributed functions (DADFs) of the CD sources do not need to know. Third, the special array geometries are not required, as the method is applicable to planar arrays. Computer simulations are shown to verify the efficacy of the proposed method.