978-1-4799-4195-7/14/$31.00©2014IEEE
An Oblique Projection Filtering Based DOA
Estimation Algorithm Without A Priori Knowledge
Hui-jun Hou, Xing-peng Mao, Hong Hong, Ai-jun Liu
School of Electronics and Information Engineering
Harbin Institute of Technology
Harbin 150001, P.R. China
mxp@hit.edu.cn
Abstract—The high resolution multiple signal classification
(MUSIC) algorithm provides an efficient way to estimate direc-
tion-of-arrival (DOA). However, it performs poorly when weak
signals are accompanied with strong ones. To solve this problem,
an oblique projection filtering based DOA estimation algorithm
is proposed without using a priori knowledge of the sources, such
as directions, strength, modulation modes, etc. Numerical results
verify the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. It is shown
that a high resolution DOA estimation of the incident sources can
be achieved. The detection performances for weak signals are
more stable and superior than that of the MUSIC algorithm.
Keywords—direction-of-arrival(DOA); oblique projection; weak
signal detection
I. INTRODUCTION
The subspace based multiple signal classification (MUSIC)
[1] algorithm plays an important role in providing the direc-
tion-of-arrival (DOA) parameters of multiple incident waves
arriving at an antenna array. However, the detection of the
weak signal in the MUSIC spectrum is likely to be influenced
by adjacent strong ones which lead to the difficulty of DOA
estimation. For example, the ability to detect and estimate the
weak signals may be lost or severely degraded.
One of the standard methods to overcome the influences of
strong signals is to divide the field-of-view into sectors. Several
well known examples employing such an idea are the beam-
space preprocessing method [2], the beam-space MUSIC ap-
proach [3], and the CLEAN algorithm [4], etc. They are all
computationally efficient for suppressing the out-of-sector
sources, whereas these techniques are not suitable to process
spatially close signals (i.e., the angular distance between two
sources is small).
With accurate and prior known source DOA of the strong
signal, the interference mitigation techniques, such as the inter-
ference jamming DOA estimation algorithm[5], the constrained
MUSIC approach [6] and the weighted prior-MUSIC method
[7], provide another efficient way to estimate the DOA parame-
ters of unknown weak sources. These algorithms pre-subtract
the high power components of mixed incident signals, and
hence result in an accurate DOA estimation. However, they
would lead to an inferior and inaccurate counteraction if the
errors of the prior known source directions were introduced.
Different from the aforementioned ideas, this work propos-
es an oblique projection filtering based DOA estimation algo-
rithm. The proposed algorithm does not require any knowledge
of the sources to be known a priori, such as directions, strength,
modulation modes, etc. It is effective for estimating directions
of spatially close signals, especially for the signals with great
strength difference. In this method, an expected direction is
firstly assumed. Then, the oblique projection (OP) [8-9] filter is
used to suppress undesired sources which incident from unex-
pected directions. After OP filter, only the signal which im-
pinges on the array from the expected direction is kept. Finally,
ransack all the potential expected directions in the angle do-
main, the problem of direction finding is converted into signal
detection. Simulation results show that both the weak and the
strong incident signals can be successfully detected. With great
power difference, the proposed algorithm is more stable and
more effective for DOA estimation in contrast with the MUSIC
approach.
II. S
IGNAL MODEL AND OBLIQUE PROJECTION
A. Signal Model
Assume that
uncorrelated and zero-mean far field sources
impinge on an array composed of
N output ports. The array
elements may be disposed discretionarily on a planar or con-
formal structure. The complex array response for the
k th snap-
shot can be written as
() () ()
F
kkk=+XX e (1)
where
() ( ) ()
F
kk=XVΘ F and
() () ()
1
,,
D
kfk fk
⎡⎤
=
⎣⎦
θθ
F .
The matrix
() () ( )
1
,,
D
N=
⎤
⎦
V Θ v θ v θ represents the ar-
ray manifold.
()
k
v θ and
()
d
k
θ
denote the normalized steering
(NS) vector and the complex envelope of the d th incident
signal, respectively. The DOA parameter
k
θ symbolizes the
azimuth angle for a 1-D array or refers to the elevation and
azimuth angles for a 2-D or 3-D structured antenna array,
[]
T
12
,,,
D
=Θθθ θ .
()
ke is the complex vector of the obser-
vation noise. The noise is modeled as a zero-mean, stationary,
spatially and temporally white Gaussian process. Furthermore,
all the incident signals are assumed to be uncorrelated with the
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of
China (No. 61171180).