Super Augmented Nested Arrays: A New Sparse Array for Improved DOA Estimation Accuracy

The super augmented nested array (SANA) is a new sparse array (SA) proposed by expanding, changing the inter-element spacing (IES), and splitting the nested array (NA). The proposed SANA further enhances the sparsity of the NA to achieve lower mutual coupling (MC) and higher uniform degrees of freedom (uDOF) than the existing SAs. Specifically, the proposed SANA contains five uniform linear arrays (ULAs), and all sensor positions can be obtained from a closed-form expression. Moreover, the weight functions and achievable uDOF of the proposed SANA are analyzed in detail. It has been shown through simulations that SANA has a significant advantage over existing SAs for direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation.