Advanced direction of arrival estimation using step‐learnt iterative soft‐thresholding for frequency‐modulated continuous wave multiple‐input multiple‐output radar

The number of antennas in automotive frequency‐modulated continuous wave (FMCW) multiple‐input multiple‐output (MIMO) radar systems is increasing. Existing greedy or subspace‐based methods cannot quickly and accurately estimate the direction of arrival (DoA) of the target. Therefore, we propose a fast and accurate DoA estimation algorithm for the automotive FMCW MIMO radar. To achieve both fastness and accuracy, we exploit the group sparsity in DoA estimation by defining the problem as a multiple measurement vector (MMV) compressive sensing and extend the step‐learnt iterative soft‐thresholding algorithm (SLISTA) to the MMV problem. To apply the extended SLISTA, we train the network in an unsupervised manner and normalise the input. We conduct experiments to evaluate the performance of the proposed method. Compared to the algorithms such as ISTA/FISTA/MFOCUSS that solve the same optimisation problem, the extended SLISTA exhibits the most accurate DoA estimation results for actual targets, with less execution time than a subspace‐based method. Moreover, the results show that the extended SLISTA prevents false detections, whereas greedy and subspace‐based methods do not.