Traditionally regularly spaced antenna arrays follow the spatial Nyquist criterion to guarantee an unambiguous analysis. We present a novel technique that makes use of two sparse non-Nyquist regularly spaced antenna arrays, where one of the arrays is just a shifted version of the other. The method offers several advantages over the use of traditional dense Nyquistspaced arrays, while maintaining a comparable algorithmic complexity for the analysis. Among the advantages we mention: an improved resolution for the same number of receivers and reduced mutual coupling effects between the receivers, both due to the increased separation between the antennas. Because of a shared structured linear system of equations between the two arrays, as a consequence of the shift between the two, the analysis of both is automatically paired, thereby avoiding a computationally expensive matching step as is required in the use of so-called co-prime arrays. In addition, an easy validation step allows to automatically detect the precise number of incoming signals, which is usually considered a difficult issue. At the same time, the validation step improves the accuracy of the retrieved results and eliminates unreliable results in the case of noisy data. The performance of the proposed method is illustrated with respect to the influence of noise as well to the effect of mutual coupling. Index Terms-Array Antennas, Direction of Arrival Estimation, Sparse Arrays. I. INTRODUCTION D IRECTION of arrival (DOA) estimation, using array antenna systems, is a topic of increasing interest in a variety of applications including radar, remote sensing, radio frequency interference mitigation, and smart wireless networks [1]-[3]. One of the most well-known limitations in regularly spaced antenna array systems is, arguably, the requirement that the elements should have spacing closer than a half-wavelength (the spatial Nyquist criterion) in order to avoid aliasing resulting in ambiguous arrival angle estimates. Unique results can be obtained for larger spacings if a limited range of near-broadside receiving angles are considered, or if the antenna element patterns exhibit zeros in the end-fire directions, but in general this still limits the allowable spacing to distances close to the Nyquist limit.