Abstract—In array signal processing, direction of arrival (DOA) estimation has typically play a key role. Its task is to find the directions impinging on an array antenna to increase the performance of the received signal. How to let DOA estimation methods are applicable to most environments, has become the key of technique implementation. The previous traditional algorithms can get superior performance for DOA estimation in the rich receiving conditions, but they are not fit for adverse environment such as low SNR, small number of array elements or snapshots, etc. In order to improve the performance of DOA estimation, the new method based on wavelet operator is proposed. Moreover, the method is respectively applied to multiple signal classification (MUSIC) and estimation of signal parameter via rotation invariance techniques (ESPRIT) to get new algorithms named WMUSIC and WESPRIT. Simulation results illustrate that the proposed method can obtain higher resolution and accuracy to compare with traditional MUSIC and ESPRIT in low SNR environment. Undoubtedly, the new method expands the application range of traditional DOA estimation algorithms and has widely practical prospects in future.