Source number estimation in non-Gaussian noise

In this paper a new method of source number estimation in non-Gaussian noise is presented. The proposed signal sub-space identification (SSI) method involves estimation of the array signal correlation matrix and determining the number of positive eigenvalues of the estimated correlation matrix. The SSI method is applied to the problem of estimating the number of plane wave narrowband signals impinging on a uniform linear array. It is shown that the performance of the SSI method in non-Gaussian heavy-tailed noise is significantly better than that of the widely used minimum description length (MDL) method and the recently proposed entropy estimation of eigenvalues (EEE) method based on random matrix theory.