Structured neural network for radar direction of arrival estimation

A radar system comprising:

• a plurality of transmitter modules configured to transmit a plurality of transmitted radar signals;
• a plurality of receiver modules configured to receive reflections of the plurality of transmitted radar signals reflected by at least one object;
• a plurality of processor cores, wherein each processing core in the plurality of processing cores is associated with layers of a neural network;
• and
• a processor configured to:
• determine a measurement vector using signals received by the plurality of receiver modules,
• determining an expression defining an iteration of an optimization problem configured to determine an optimized output amplitude vector, wherein the expression includes a first parameter that is a hermitian-centrohermitian matrix or a circulant matrix,
• causing each processor core of the plurality of processor cores to solve iterations of the expression to determine an optimized value of the first parameter,
• causing a final processor core of the plurality of processor cores to determine optimized output amplitude vector based on the optimized value of the first parameter, wherein the optimized output amplitude vector is a sparse signal vector, and
• determine an estimated direction of arrival of a first object using the optimized output amplitude vector.

A method, comprising:

• determining a measurement vector using signals received a plurality of radar receiver modules;
• determining an expression defining an iteration of an optimization problem configured to determine an optimized output amplitude vector based on the measurement vector, wherein the expression includes a first parameter that is a hermitian-centrohermitian matrix or a circulant matrix;
• causing each node of a neural network to solve iterations of the expression to determine an optimized value of the first parameter;
• causing a final node of the neural network to determine optimized output amplitude vector based on the optimized value of the first parameter;
• and
• determining an estimated direction of arrival of a first object using the optimized output amplitude vector.