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“Testing of a New Direction Finding Method in Impulsive Interference Environments”
by Panagiotis Tsakalides and Chrysostomos L. Nikias
March 1994
In this report, a new direction finding method is introduced for optimal performance over a wide range of non-Gaussian additive noise environments. The maximum likelihood approach is used for the bearing estimation of multiple sources from a set of snapshots when the interference is impulsive in nature. The analysis is based on the assumption that the additive noise can be modeled as a complex isotropic Cauchy process. It is shown that the Cauchy beamformer greatly outperforms the Gaussian beamformer in a wide variety of non-Gaussian noise environments, and performs comparably to the Gaussian beamformer when the additive noise is Gaussian. The robustness of the new method in a wide range of impulsive interference environments is demonstrated via extensive simulation experiments. The testing employs two sonar signal waveforms (an acoustic emission, and a single pulse of square CW) in a realistic setting.