A high-resolution method for direction of arrival estimation based on an improved self-attention module

The high-resolution direction of arrival (DOA) estimation is a prominent research issue in underwater acoustics. The existing high-resolution methods include subspace methods and sparse representation methods. However, the performance of subspace methods suffers from low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and limited snapshots conditions, and the computational complexity of sparse representation methods is too high. The neural network methods are emerging high-resolution methods. However, insufficient support for big data is frequently observed in underwater acoustics, and conventional network structures present challenges in further enhancing performance. To address the aforementioned problems, we propose a neural network method based on an improved self-attention module to achieve high accuracy and robust DOA estimation. First, we design a multi-head self-attention module with large-scale convolutional kernels and residual structures to improve the estimated accuracy. Second, we propose an improved input feature to enhance the robustness to non-uniform noise and unequal-intensity targets. The simulations demonstrate that the proposed method exhibits superior angle resolution compared to sparse representation methods under the same simulation conditions. The proposed method demonstrates exceptional accuracy and robustness in DOA estimation under challenging conditions of low SNR, limited snapshots, and unequal-intensity targets. The experimental results further prove the effectiveness of the proposed method.