Joint Estimation of the Central Direction of Arrival and Angular Spread for Distributed Source Based on Beamspace Propagator

Beamspace propagator method is suggested to estimate the central direction of arrival and angular spread for distributed source jointly. Especially for coherently distributed source, when the deterministic angular signal density is uniform, the nominal steering vector is deduced to subject to Vandermonde matrix. The proposed method is a possible alternative to conventional propagator method to estimate the parameters for distributed source, which enhances estimate accuracy with lower computational complexity. Simulation results clearly demonstrate that the proposed method is not only effective, but also enjoys better SNR performance compared with conventional propagator method