In order to improve the joint estimation accuracy of time of arrival （TOA） and direction of arrival （DOA） in existing impulse radio ultra wideband （IR-UWB） systems， a joint estimation method of TOA and DOA based on discrete Fourier transform （DFT） is proposed. First， the received signal is modeled in the frequency domain. Second， the rough TOA estimation results of the two antennas can be obtained via processing DFT on the covariance matrix of the received signal in the frequency domain. Based on the rough estimation results， we search the compensation value with a small interval， thereby the accurate estimation of TOA can be obtained. Third， according to the relationship between the time difference of arrival of the two antennas and DOA， we obtain the DOA estimation results， thus realize the joint estimation of TOA and DOA. The simulation results show that the performance of the proposed algorithm is better than that of the matrix pencil algorithm and the traditional propagation method， and the advantage becomes more obvious with the increase of SNR. Moreover， the proposed algorithm is easier to be implemented in engineering because it does not need complex eigenvalue decomposition and generalized inverse solution steps.