Partial Dictionary Based Off-Grid DOA Estimation Using Combined Coprime and Nested Array

A partial dictionary based direction of arrival (DOA) estimation method which addresses the off-grid problem and exploits combined coprime and nested array (CCNA) is proposed. Compared to general coprime array, CCNA yields two sparse coprime subarrays in the coarray domain by adding a third subarray in the physical-array domain. To ensure the DOA estimation performance, the subarray with larger aperture is chosen, and the cyclic phase ambiguity caused by the sparse subarray allows partial dictionary covering arbitrary cycle to represent the whole atoms, and then, the off-grid sparse reconstruction method is developed to amend the grid mismatch. After the sparse recovery and off-grid compensation, ambiguous DOA estimations can be eliminated by substituting the estimations into the whole virtual array. Multiple simulations verify that the proposed algorithm outperforms the other state-of-the-art methods in terms of DOA estimation accuracy and angular resolution.