Direction determination of wideband signals

Abstract

A computationally efficient sensor array processing method has been developed for estimating the bearings of multiple planewave sources with unknown frequency characteristics within a wideband. The method uses the zero-delay covariances of the complex analytic representations of the sensor signals of a planar array to estimate the wavenumber spectrum. This spectrum determines source bearings over the entire 360 degree range. The computational requirements of this method are of the same order as frequeney-wavenumber analysis on a planar array at a single frequency. In contrast to the single frequency analysis, this method provides wideband temporal frequency information above each plane-wave. The usefulness of this method for the bearing estimation of acoustic sources is demonstrated with experiments on real data.