Partial Relaxation Approach: An Eigenvalue-Based DOA Estimator Framework

In this paper, the partial relaxation approach is introduced and applied to DOA estimation using spectral search. Unlike existing methods like Capon or MUSIC which can be considered as single source approximations of multi-source estimation criteria, the proposed approach accounts for the existence of multiple sources. At each considered direction, the manifold structure of the remaining interfering signals impinging on the sensor array is relaxed, which results in closed form estimates for the interference parameters. The conventional multidimensional optimization problem reduces, thanks to this relaxation, to a simple spectral search. Following this principle, we propose estimators based on the Deterministic Maximum Likelihood, Weighted Subspace Fitting and covariance fitting methods. To calculate the pseudo-spectra efficiently, an iterative rooting scheme based on the rational function approximation is applied to the partial relaxation methods. Simulation results show that the performance of the proposed estimators is superior to the conventional methods especially in the case of low Signal-to-Noise-Ratio and low number of snapshots, irrespectively of any specific structure of the sensor array while maintaining a comparable computational cost as MUSIC.Comment: This work has been submitted to IEEE for possible publication. Copyright may be transferred without notice, after which this version may no longer be accessibl

Subspace Leakage Analysis and Improved DOA Estimation with Small Sample Size

Classical methods of DOA estimation such as the MUSIC algorithm are based on estimating the signal and noise subspaces from the sample covariance matrix. For a small number of samples, such methods are exposed to performance breakdown, as the sample covariance matrix can largely deviate from the true covariance matrix. In this paper, the problem of DOA estimation performance breakdown is investigated. We consider the structure of the sample covariance matrix and the dynamics of the root-MUSIC algorithm. The performance breakdown in the threshold region is associated with the subspace leakage where some portion of the true signal subspace resides in the estimated noise subspace. In this paper, the subspace leakage is theoretically derived. We also propose a two-step method which improves the performance by modifying the sample covariance matrix such that the amount of the subspace leakage is reduced. Furthermore, we introduce a phenomenon named as root-swap which occurs in the root-MUSIC algorithm in the low sample size region and degrades the performance of the DOA estimation. A new method is then proposed to alleviate this problem. Numerical examples and simulation results are given for uncorrelated and correlated sources to illustrate the improvement achieved by the proposed methods. Moreover, the proposed algorithms are combined with the pseudo-noise resampling method to further improve the performance.Comment: 37 pages, 10 figures, Submitted to the IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing in July 201

Grid-free compressive beamforming

The direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation problem involves the localization of a few sources from a limited number of observations on an array of sensors, thus it can be formulated as a sparse signal reconstruction problem and solved efficiently with compressive sensing (CS) to achieve high-resolution imaging. On a discrete angular grid, the CS reconstruction degrades due to basis mismatch when the DOAs do not coincide with the angular directions on the grid. To overcome this limitation, a continuous formulation of the DOA problem is employed and an optimization procedure is introduced, which promotes sparsity on a continuous optimization variable. The DOA estimation problem with infinitely many unknowns, i.e., source locations and amplitudes, is solved over a few optimization variables with semidefinite programming. The grid-free CS reconstruction provides high-resolution imaging even with non-uniform arrays, single-snapshot data and under noisy conditions as demonstrated on experimental towed array data.Comment: 14 pages, 8 figures, journal pape

Multi-Step Knowledge-Aided Iterative ESPRIT for Direction Finding

In this work, we propose a subspace-based algorithm for DOA estimation which iteratively reduces the disturbance factors of the estimated data covariance matrix and incorporates prior knowledge which is gradually obtained on line. An analysis of the MSE of the reshaped data covariance matrix is carried out along with comparisons between computational complexities of the proposed and existing algorithms. Simulations focusing on closely-spaced sources, where they are uncorrelated and correlated, illustrate the improvements achieved.Comment: 7 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1703.1052