METHOD FOR ESTIMATING THE NUMBER OF INCIDENT SOURCES IN A SENSOR ARRAY BY MEANS OF ESTIMATING NOISE STATISTICS

摘要

The invention relates to a method and system for determining the number of incident sources in an array that comprises C sensors receiving N observations, said method comprising at least the following steps: calculating the matrix B and the eigenvalues {λ₁,…, λ_N} thereof obtained from a signal received on C sensors; classifying the eigenvalues {λ₁,…, λ_N} so as to obtain λ₁≥… ≥ λ_N; initializing from i to i= M + 1 and i = i - 1; calculating the mean and the standard deviation of the noise eigenvalues; calculating the mean of the N - i lowest eigenvalues of the matrix B; and calculating the standard deviation of the N - i lowest eigenvalues of the matrix B. If λ₁ λ_moy + ησ, then said eigenvalue belongs to the signal space, and the number of sources present in the mixture is equal to i, where η is a threshold that makes it possible to monitor the probability of a false alarm. If λ₁ λ_moy + ησ, said eigenvalue belongs to the noise space, and the steps are repeated.