The invention discloses a direction-of-arrival
estimation method based on sparse representation of a spatial
smoothing covariance matrix. The method mainly solves the problems that the calculation amount is large, the performance of
processing coherent
signal sources is poor and consequently errors in passive location
estimation are large in the prior art. The method comprises the implementation steps: (1) forming a uniform
linear array by antenna receivers, (2) the spatial
smoothing covariance matrix output by the array is calculated according to the spatial
smoothing technology, (3) vectorizing the spatial smoothing
covariance matrix to obtain
sparse model vectors, (4) carrying out
mesh generation on a
spatial domain to construct a perfect base, (5) establishing a constrained optimization equation based on the sparse representation relation between the
sparse model vectors and the perfect base, (6) solving the constrained optimization equation according to the convex optimization method to obtain an
optimal estimation value, and (7) drawing a magnitude spectrum according to the
optimal estimation value to obtain the value of
direction of arrival. By means of the method, the calculation speed of passive direction finding is increased, and the performance of estimating the coherent
signal sources at a low
signal-to-
noise ratio is improved. The method can be applied to target reconnaissance and passive localization.