DOA Estimation for Sources with Large Power Differences

Sources with large power differences are very common, especially in complex electromagnetic environments. Classical DOA estimation methods suffer from performance degradation in terms of resolution when dealing with sources that have large power differences. In this paper, we propose an improved DOA algorithm to increase the resolution performance in resolving such sources. The proposed method takes advantage of diagonal loading and demonstrates that the invariant property of noise subspace still holds after diagonal loading is performed. We also find that the Cramer–Rao bound of the weak source can be affected by the power of the strong source, and this has not been noted before. The Cramer–Rao bound of the weak source deteriorates as the power of the strong source increases. Numerical results indicate that the improved algorithm increases the probability of resolution while maintaining the estimation accuracy and computational complexity.