Fourth Order Cumulant Based Active Direction Of Arrival Estimation Using Coprime Arrays

Higher order cumulants based direction of arrival (DOA) estimation has attracted increasing attention since several years. However, higher order cumulants for the active DOA estimation has not been thoroughly studied. In this paper, we investigate the fourth order cumulant for active DOA estimation. Our work can lead to higher degrees of freedom without modifying the sparse array geometry. This is achieved by constructing a fourth order difference coarray of a sum coarray. The fourth order difference coarray will be shown to be able to further increase the effective array aperture in the active DOA estimation. We also investigate the property of the fourth order difference coarray by considering coprime arrays geometry. Simulation results verify the improved performance of the proposed strategy.