Localization of Narrow-Band Sources in Unknown Spatially Correlated Noise

In subspace-based method for direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation of signal wavefronts, the additive noise term is often assumed to be spatially white or known to within a multiplicative scalar. When the noise is nonwhite but has a known covariance matrix, we can still handle the problem through prewhitening. However, the problem turns to be complex when the noise field is completely unknown. In this paper, we study the localization of the sources, when the noise covariance matrix is one unknown band matrix. An iterative denoising algorithm based on the noise subspace spanned by the eigenvectors associated with the smallest eigenvalues is developed. The performance of the proposed algorithm is evaluated by computer simulations. We also test the proposed algorithm with some experimental data recorded during an underwater acoustic experiment.