Design of a low-complexity DOA estimation method based on fourth-order cumulants

Abstract

To address the problem that the conventional algorithm has a very high complexity in estimating the direction of arrival (DOA) of coherent sources in the background of colour noise, this paper proposes a low-complexity DOA estimation method based on the fourth-order cumulant and Toeplitz matrix reconstruction. Firstly, a fourth-order cumulant (FOC) matrix is constructed from the received signal vector to suppress the noise component, and the redundant information in the FOC matrix is removed by storing the matrix to obtain the reduced dimensional FOC matrix. Afterwards, the Toeplitz matrix is reconstructed to extend the array aperture and to achieve decoherence. Finally, the DOA estimation of the reconstructed matrix is performed using the MUSIC algorithm. Simulations demonstrate that the DOA estimation of coherent signals in a colour-noise background is less complex and maintains a higher accuracy than conventional algorithms.