Source Enumeration via the EEF Criterion

Recently, the exponentially embedded families (EEF) criterion for model order selection has been proposed based on the theories of exponentially embedded families and sufficient statistics. In this letter, it is proved that the EEF criterion is consistent, and then the EEF is used to determine the number of sources in array signal processing. Computer simulation results demonstrate better performance of the EEF criterion for closely spaced sources, at low SNR and/or a small number of snapshots.