An ESPRIT-like algorithm for coherent DOA estimation based on data matrix decomposition in MIMO radar

A direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation method for coherent sources is presented for MIMO radar. It uses symmetrical array mode for both the transmit and receive arrays and reconstructs a special data matrix from the range-compressed receive data. In the reconstructed matrix, the signal term is a Toeplitz matrix with the rank only related to the DOAs of the signals and independent with their coherency. Taking the noise term into account, the average method of multiple pulses is utilized to obtain the signal and noise subspaces. And then the DOA can be resolved via the SVD-based ESPRIT algorithm. Furthermore, the presented method is also useful in spatial colored noise scenario for MIMO radar. Theoretical and numerical simulations show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.