Direction of arrival estimation via sparse representation of fourth order statistics

Abstract

In this paper, a new direction of arrival (DOA) estimation method is proposed based on the sparse presentation of array covariance matrix of a difference co-array, which is obtained by exploiting fourth order cumulants. The DOAs are estimated by finding the sparsest solution in a redundant basis. We also give a theoretical guidance to select the regularization parameter. Since fourth order cumulants are used, our method can not only detect more sources than sensors but also can suppress spatially colored noise. Besides, our method achieves higher resolution compared with existing methods. Simulation results are given to demonstrate the effectiveness and excellent performance of the proposed method.