Abstract: In sonar applications where the effect of target′s angular spread may not be ignored,the direct application of most high-resolution methods based on the point sources assumption can lead to inaccurate estimation of DOA. It is evident that algorithms based on the assumption of distributed source model are suitable for the environment. Recently,as the problem of spatial distributed sources attracts more attention,many algorithms such as DSPE and ESPRIT have been developed. However,these are not always realistic as they need high SNR and incoherent sources. In order to deals with the problem of bearing estimation for distributed sources which are coherent with each other and improve the performance in case of low SNR,an improved method is presented in this paper. Simulation results show that the improved method can raise the performance of the algorithm under low SNR,and can distinguish coherent sources efficiently.