The present disclosure relates to methods and systems for signal processing using coordinate descent technique for solving technical implementation problems that are expressed as unit-modulus least squares (UMLS) and unit-modulus quadratic program (UMQP) problems. Embodiments provide for iteratively minimizing an objective function of a signal vector associated with a UMLS/UMQP problem expression over a set of coordinates of the signal vector to a convergence point. The objective function is minimized with respect to a vector element corresponding to a selected coordinate index, while other vector elements that do not correspond to the selected coordinate index are fixed. Accordingly, at each iteration, minimizing the objective function involves a solution to a one-dimensional univariate quadratic minimization. Embodiments also provide various coordinate index selection rules that include a cyclic CD rule (CCD), a randomized CD rule (RCD), randomly permuted CD rule (RPCD), and a greedy CD rule (CCD).