Estimating direction of arrival for coherently distributed sources in noise

This paper proposes a blind identification approach to direction of arrival estimation of coherently distributed sources without knowing the accurate function forms of the angular signal density. By use of one dimensional DOA search rather than resort to multidimensional parametric search, we get an algorithm for DOA estimation of distributed sources. The algorithm can be applied in non-uniform linear array and hybrid sources condition. The simulation studies show that the new method outperforms the MUSIC algorithm by reducing the sensitivity for scenarios with distributed sources.