The invention discloses a non-circular signal wave arrival direction angle estimation method based on compression perception. The objective of the invention is to solve problems of low utilization rate of array elements and small quantity of signal recognition in the prior art. The method comprises steps of 1), acquiring nest array output signals, calculating covariance matrixes and ellipse covariance matrixes, constructing corresponding covariance vectors, calculating dimensionality of elements in the two vectors, constructing corresponding virtual array vectors and constructing sparse reconstruction vectors; 2), according to the sparse reconstruction vectors, constructing over-complete bases and defining first and second airspace sparse vectors, wave arrival direction angle ranges and constant matrixes; and 3) through the sparse reconstruction method, acquiring optimal estimation of the first airspace sparse vectors, drawing amplitude spectral graphs and finding first K spectrum peaks with the quite big amplitude values, wherein x-axis coordinates corresponding to the peak points of the spectrum peaks are to-be-solved angle values. According to the invention, in case of limited quantity of the array elements, the number of the signal sources recognized by the array can be greatly increased and the method is suitable for target detection and passive positioning.