Detection in correlated Gaussian plus impulsive noise

A detector which is designed to operate in a correlated Gaussian-plus-impulsive-noise environment is presented. The detector whitens the data robustly and then uses a two-sided threshold test to determine the presence of impulsive samples. The impulsive samples are discarded, and the remaining samples are used to detect the presence or absence of a signal using a matched filter. An approximate analysis is presented, and simulations are used to demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach     

On Albersheim's Detection Equation

Albersheim's detection formula is extremely accurate over the usual range of parameters. It is much more convenient to use than lengthy computer programs, and it provides direct insight into tradeoffs in design. Quantitative information on the accuracy bounds of Albersheim's formula is given here. Other contributions made by Albersheim are discussed and some biographical information is provided.     

Estimating the Angles of Arrival of Multiple Plane Waves

The problem of estimating the angles of arrival of M plane waves incident simultaneously on a line array with L + 1 (L?M) sensors utilizing the special eigenstructure of the covariance matrix C of the signal plus noise at the output of the array is addressed. A polynomial D(z) with special properties is constructed from the eigenvectors of C, the zeros of which give estimates of the angle of arrival. Although the procedure turns out to be essentially the same as that developed by Reddi, the development presented here provides insight into the estimation problem.     

Adaptive detection using low rank approximation to a data matrix

Using an accurate formula for the error in approximating a low rank component, we calculate the performance of adaptive detection based on reduced-rank nulling. In this principal component inverse (PCI) method, one temporarily regards the interference as a strong signal to be enhanced. The resulting estimate of the interference waveform is subtracted from the observed data, and matched filtering is used to detect signal components in the residual waveform. We also present a generalized likelihood-ratio test (GLRT) for adaptively detecting a low rank signal in the presence of low rank interference. This approach leads to a test which is closely related to the PCI method and extends the PCI method to the case where strong signal components are present in the data. A major accomplishment of the work is our calculation of the statistics of the output of the matched filter for the case in which interference cancellation and signal detection are carried out on the same observed data matrix. That is, no separate data is used for adaptation. Examples are presented using both simulated data and real, active-sonar reverberation data from the ARSRP, the Acoustic Reverberation Special Research Program of the Office of Naval Research     

Constrained Least-Squares Synthesis of Coefficients for Arrays of Sensors and FIR Digital Filters

A general method is presented for synthesizing weighting coefficients for arrays of sensors or for finite-impulse-response (FIR) digital filters. The beam pattern of the array or the frequency response of the digital filter is a weighted, least mean-square (LMS) approximation to a desired function, subject to constrained pattern values at specified points. The method is applied to the problem of producing beam patterns of a line array for the rejection of interfering point sources. For this case, we show that adaptive array processing can be based on modification of the roots of the array polynomial.     

Data-Adaptive Detection of a Weak Signal

Motivated by a form of the likelihood-ratio-tesf statistic for detection of a rank-one Gaussian signal in colored Gaussian noise, we apply our earlier technique for estimation of a low-rank signal to the problem of estimating and subtracting the waveform of a strong sinusoidal interference prior to detection of a weak sinusoidal signal. We consider the difficult case in which samples of data are taken over a short interval of time or space and the frequencies of the sinusoidal signal and sinusoidal interference are more closely spaced than the reciprocal of the extent of the aperture. The method can be applied to cases of nonsinusoidal and/or random signals and interference. The most important assumption is that when the samples of the interference are arranged in matrix form the matrix is approximately of low rank in the sense that, with high probability, the interference-only matrix can be well approximated by a matrix of low rank.