Accurate and low-cost DOA estimation method using array covariance matrix elements

This paper presents a computationally efficient Direction-Of-Arrival (DOA) estimation algorithm by Uniform Linear Array (ULA), which is effective for highly-correlated sources but also works for uncorrelated sources. The proposed algorithm is basically based on the relation between the elements of array covariance matrix, does not need eigendecomposition, iteration or angular peak-search, and leads very low computational cost. The DOA estimation accuracy of the proposed method achieves almost the same with that of the Method Of Direction Estimation (MODE). Detailed performance of the proposed method is evaluated through computer simulation.