An approach to direction-of-arrival （DOA） estimation for multiple narrowband farfield signals is proposed. The technique uses a novel matrix spatial prefiltering approach. Specifically, a matrix filter is designed to spatially filter the incoming data snapshots. The un-wanted components arriving from the stopband angular sectors are attenuated and the desired components from the angular sector of interest pass with minimal distortion. The matrix filter spatially filters the element-space data and the output reserves the element-space data property, which makes it very useful by passing sensor data through a spatial prefilter prior to applying many other array processors to attenuate interferences and improve system performance. Several examples of DOA estimation problem are presented to illustrate the performance of the proposed spatial prefiltering approach. Results of simulation and real data show that the pre-filter can efficiently attenuate the spatial interferences and significantly improve the estimation and resolution capability of DOA estimators at low signal-to-noise ratios for the sources located inside the passband sector. In addition, the use of spatial prefilter makes it possible to estimate DOAs for multiple sources more than the number of the elements of an array.
