Abstract:Direction of arrival (DOA) estimation is an important research topic of array signal processing, which is also one of the key technologies in the field of electronic reconnaissance and electronic attack. In order to improve the accuracy for DOA estimation and reduce computational complexity, this paper presented a unified framework of DOA estimation with deep unfolding networks, which combines the advantages of model driven approaches and data driven approaches. Moreover, this paper introduced the research progress of off-grid DOA estimation, gridless DOA estimation and mixed signal parameter estimation with sparse arrays. Finally, the following research ideas were prospected from the aspects of the DOA estimation under complex signal models, the performance analysis and mining of deep unfolding network, and the echo signal fusion processing of distributed sparse array.