UCA Root-MUSIC With Sparse Uniform Circular Arrays

Several algorithms for direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation with uniform circular arrays rely on the beamspace transform as it allows computationally efficient estimation of the angles-of-arrival. The performance of such estimators is degraded if the array has a small number of elements. We introduce adaptations to UCA Root-MUSIC resulting in an algorithm that delivers accurate azimuth estimates in a search-free way even when the number of antenna elements is insufficient to apply traditional beamspace-based algorithms. We validate our algorithm by means of several examples based on synthetic and experimental data.