Superresolution 2D DOA Estimation for a Rectangular Array via Reweighted Decoupled Atomic Norm Minimization

This paper proposes a superresolution two-dimensional (2D) direction of arrival (DOA) estimation algorithm for a rectangular array based on the optimization of the atomic norm and a series of relaxation formulations. The atomic norm of the array response describes the minimum number of sources, which is derived from the atomic norm minimization (ANM) problem. However, the resolution is restricted and high computational complexity is incurred by using ANM for 2D angle estimation. Although an improved algorithm named decoupled atomic norm minimization (DAM) has a reduced computational burden, the resolution is still relatively low in terms of angle estimation. To overcome these limitations, we propose the direct minimization of the atomic norm, which is demonstrated to be equivalent to a decoupled rank optimization problem in the positive semidefinite (PSD) form. Our goal is to solve this rank minimization problem and recover two decoupled Toeplitz matrices in which the azimuth-elevation angles of interest are encoded. Since rank minimization is an NP-hard problem, a novel sparse surrogate function is further proposed to effectively approximate the two decoupled rank functions. Then, the new optimization problem obtained through the above relaxation can be implemented via the majorization-minimization (MM) method. The proposed algorithm offers greatly improved resolution while maintaining the same computational complexity as the DAM algorithm. Moreover, it is possible to use a single snapshot for angle estimation without prior information on the number of sources, and the algorithm is robust to noise due to its iterative nature. In addition, the proposed surrogate function can achieve local convergence faster than existing functions.