Computationally Efficient Ambiguity-Free Two-Dimensional DOA Estimation Method for Coprime Planar Array: RD-Root-MUSIC Algorithm

While the two-dimensional (2D) spectral peak search suffers from expensive computational burden in direction of arrival (DOA) estimation, we propose a reduced-dimensional root-MUSIC (RD-Root-MUSIC) algorithm for 2D DOA estimation with coprime planar array (CPA), which is computationally efficient and ambiguity-free. Different from the conventional 2D DOA estimation algorithms based on subarray decomposition, we exploit the received data of the two subarrays jointly by mapping CPA to the full array of the CPA (FCPA), which contributes to the enhanced degrees of freedom (DOFs) and improved estimation performance. In addition, due to the ambiguity-free characteristic of the FCPA, the extra ambiguity elimination operation can be avoided. Furthermore, we convert the 2D spectral search process into 1D polynomial rooting via reduced-dimension transformation, which substantially reduces the computational complexity while preserving the estimation accuracy. Finally, numerical simulations demonstrate the superiority of the proposed algorithm.