The invention discloses a co-prime array wave arrival direction estimation method based on interpolation virtual array signal atom norm minimization. The objective of the invention is to solve the problem of an information loss caused by non-uniformity of a virtual array in the prior art. The method comprises following steps that a receiving end constructs a co-prime array; based on the co-prime array, an incidence signal is received and modeling is performed; an equivalence virtual signal corresponding to the a co-prime array receiving signal is calculated; an interpolation virtual array is constructed and modeling is performed; a multi-sampling snapshot signal of the interpolation virtual array and a sampling covariance matrix thereof are constructed; a projection matrix is constructed and projection calculation related to the projection matrix is defined; an optimization problem based on the interpolation virtual array signal atom norm minimization is designed and solved; and direction-of-arrival estimation is performed according to the reconstructed interpolation virtual array covariance matrix. According to the invention, the freedom degree and the resolution of the direction-of-arrival estimation are improved and the method can be used for passive positioning and target detection.