How to Determine an Optimal Noise Subspace?

The multiple signal classification (MUSIC) algorithm based on the orthogonality between the signal subspace and noise subspace is one of the most frequently used methods in the estimation of direction of arrival (DOA), and its performance of DOA estimation mainly depends on the accuracy of the noise subspace. In the most existing researches, the noise subspace is formed by (defined as) the eigenvectors corresponding to all small eigenvalues of the array output covariance matrix. However, we found that the estimation of DOA through the noise subspace in the traditional formation is not optimal in almost all cases, and using a partial noise subspace can always obtain optimal estimation results. In other words, the subspace spanned by the eigenvectors corresponding to a part of the small eigenvalues is more representative of the noise subspace. We demonstrate this conclusion through a number of experiments. Thus, it seems that which and how many eigenvectors should be selected to form the partial noise subspace would be an interesting issue. In addition, this research poses a much general problem: how to select eigenvectors to determine an optimal noise subspace?