Can DOA Algorithms Be Deceived?
Licheng Zhao, Rui Zhou, Ming‐Yi You, Wenqiang Pu · IEEE Signal Processing Letters · 2025
In this paper, we reflect on an interesting question whether direction of arrival (DOA) detection algorithms can be deceived. When the transmit signals are independent, prevalent DOA algorithms suffice to find the correct arriving directions from measurement statistics at the receiver end. But when the signals are coherent, the expected spectrum peaks may not show up and the detection performance deteriorates to a great extent. Instead of addressing the coherence issue, we take advantage of this phenomenon and fake a peak at a desired DOA in an attempt to launch a deception attack. The deception is realized by constructing a specified steering vector through a composite of candidate vectors in the dictionary. Thereafter, we apply the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) framework to develop an efficient solution algorithm. Numerical simulations show that the proposed algorithm gives satisfactory DOA deception performance.