An ESPRIT-like algorithm for coherent DOA estimation

Conventionally, the approaches to coherent direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation are to eliminate the rank loss of the spatial covariance matrix. In this letter, a new technique is presented from another point of view, which reconstructs a special antenna array model based on the Toeplitz matrix whose rank is only related to the DOA of signals and cannot be affected by the coherency between them. Therefore, the signal and noise subspaces can be estimated properly. In conjoint with the improved estimation of signal parameter via rotational invariance techniques (ESPRIT) algorithm, it is capable of resolving the DOAs of coherent signals as well as uncorrelated signals without peak searching. The numerical examples demonstrate its validity.