Fast algorithm for direction of arrival based on time-frequency distributions

Time-frequency distribution (TFD) method has received a considerable amount of attention in Direction of Arrival (DOA) estimation of multi-senor and time space processing, which lead to improved spatial resolution and source separation performances. According to the characteristic of the different time-frequency distribution of each source, a novel approach of time-frequency DOA estimation is provided based on the propagator method (PM). Compared with the conventional approaches, the presented method has lower computational complexity with insignificant performance degradation for DOA estimation. Furthermore, in the proposed method of time-frequency DOA estimation, propagator can be obtained without a priori knowledge of the number of impinging sources on array if t-f points in time-frequency domain are chosen appropriately, which widens the application of propagator to Radar, Sonar and passive detection system. The effectiveness and high resolution of the algorithms is verified via computer simulations.