Direction finding for two-dimensional incoherently distributed sources with Hadamard shift invariance in non-uniform orthogonal arrays

This paper proposes a novel algorithm for Two-Dimensional (2D) central Direction-of-Arrival (DOA) estimation of incoherently distributed sources. In particular, an orthogonal array structure consisting of two Non-uniform Linear Arrays (NLAs) is considered. Based on first-order Taylor series approximation, the Generalized Array Manifold (GAM) model can first be established to separate the central DOAs from the original array manifold. Then, the Hadamard rotational invariance relationships inside the GAMs of two NLAs are identified. With the aid of such relationships, the central elevation and azimuth DOAs can be estimated through a search-free polynomial rooting method. Additionally, a simple parameter pairing of the estimated 2D angular parameters is also accomplished via the Hadamard rotational invariance relationship inside the GAM of the whole array. A secondary but important result is a derivation of closed-form expressions of the Cramer-Rao lower bound. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can achieve a remarkably higher precision at less complexity increment compared with the existing low-complexity methods, which benefits from the larger array aperture of the NLAs. Moreover, it requires no priori information about the angular distributed function.