# Thinned Coprime Arrays for DOA Estimation

## TL;DR

This paper introduces thinned coprime arrays that reduce sensor count while maintaining the same aperture and DOFs as traditional coprime arrays, enhancing DOA estimation efficiency.

## Contribution

The paper proposes a novel thinned coprime array structure that reduces sensors needed without sacrificing aperture or degrees-of-freedom, compared to existing coprime arrays.

## Key findings

- Thinned coprime arrays achieve the same DOFs with fewer sensors.
- Simulation results demonstrate effective DOA estimation using compressive sensing.
- Analysis shows the new array structure maintains performance advantages of coprime arrays.

## Abstract

Sparse arrays can generate a larger aperture than traditional uniform linear arrays (ULA) and offer enhanced degrees-of-freedom (DOFs) which can be exploited in both beamforming and direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation. One class of sparse arrays is the coprime array, composed of two uniform linear subarrays which yield an effective difference co-array with higher number of DOFs. In this work, we present a new coprime array structure termed thinned coprime array (TCA), which exploits the redundancy in the structure of the existing coprime array and achieves the same virtual aperture and DOFs as the conventional coprime array with much fewer number of sensors. An analysis of the DOFs provided by the new structure in comparison with other sparse arrays is provided and simulation results for DOA estimation using the compressive sensing based method are provided.