A Deflation Approach to Direction of Arrival Estimation for Symmetric Uniform Linear Array

A novel deflation approach to direction of arrival (DOA) estimation for symmetric uniform linear array is proposed in this letter to cope with the scenario where both uncorrelated sources and coherent sources are presented. The uncorrelated sources are first estimated using conventional subspace methods, and then their effect is eliminated by two deflation methods: one exploits the symmetric configuration of the array, and the other utilizes oblique projection. After deflation, a Toeplitz matrix is constructed for DOA estimation of the remaining coherent sources. The number of sources resolved by our approach can exceed the number of array elements. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of our proposed methods.