Toeplitz Projection Based DSPE Method for DOA Estimation of Coherently Distributed Sources

Coherently distributed (CD) sources are typically characterized by their direction of arrival (DOA) and angular spread. Traditional distributed signal parameter estimation (DSPE) methods for CD sources rely on a computationally intensive two-dimensional spectral search, which limits their suitability for real-time applications. In this letter, we propose a simple yet effective method to decouple the angular parameters of CD sources. By projecting the sample covariance matrix onto Toeplitz space, DOA information is approximately extracted. The DOAs are then estimated by a polynomial root-finding approach, followed by a one-dimensional DSPE spectral search to determine the angular spread. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method achieves performance comparable to existing approaches while significantly enhancing computational efficiency.