A Novel Method of DOA Estimation Based on Subarray Beamforming for Uniform Circular Arrays

A novel method of direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation based on subarray beamforming for uniform circular arrays is proposed. In this method, the beamform manifold of uniform circular arrays is transformed via virtual structure, and then the virtual arrays are divided into two subarrrays. The target DOA is estimated from the phase shift between the reference signal and its phase-shifted version by subarray beamforming. The computation of the proposed method is simple, and the number of the signal sources of target is not bounded by the number of antenna elements. Simulation results demonstrate that proposed method has significantly improved estimation resolution, capacity, and accuracy relative to other method.