Abstract: In order to estimate two-dimensional (2-D) direction-of-arrival(DOA) of coherent signal sources fast in complex electromagnetic interference environments, a novel two-dimensional ESPRIT method called single snapshot ESPRIT algorithm(SS-ESPRIT) is proposed. The proposed algorithm reconstructs four equivalent covariance matrices using only one snapshot data from arrays. The four equivalent covariance matrices compose an extended equivalent covariance matrix. De-correlation and 2-D DOA estimation could be accomplished via the eigen-decomposition of the matrix. The strategy of in-phased data accumulation is also proposed to improve the performance of SS-ESPRIT algorithm. Simulation results show that SS-ESPRIT algorithm could realize fast estimation of 2-D DOA without causing the performance degradation. The estimation performance of new algorithm using single snapshot is better than that of direction-of-arrival matrix (DOAM) algorithm using 50 snapshots and is close to the performance of DOAM algorithm using 100 snapshots. The estimation performance of the algorithm using 8 in-phased data is better than that of DOAM algorithm using 200 snapshots. It could be concluded that the algorithm proposed in this research is suitable for application in short-time sampled data and real-time estimation.