Sparse 3D Array made from Nested Linear Array

Branches for Underdetermined Source Localization

Shekhar Kumar Yadav (corresponding author) and Nithin V. George
Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar, India
Email: {yadav_shekhar, nithin}@iitgn.ac.in

EUSIPCO 2022
Aug-Sep 2022
Preliminaries

2
Sensor Array
• A sensor array refers to a number of individual sensors organized in either a pre-defined geometric
shape or an arbitrary geometry that acquire signals in the spatial domain. Typically, an array is
made up of omnidirectional sensors.

 Detect the number of sources.

 Localize the sources i.e. estimate

the azimuth and elevation direction
of arrival (DOA) of the sources.

 Perform beamforming i.e. spatial

filtering to extract the source in the
presence of other interfering sources,
reverberation and noise.

3
[1] H. L. Van Trees, Optimum Array Processing: Part IV of Detection, Estimation, and Modulation Theory. Hoboken, NJ, USA: Wiley, 2004.
Different Geometries of Sensor Arrays

Uniform Linear Array Uniform Circular Array

Uniform Rectangular Array

Uniform Cube Array Spherical Array
4
[1] H. L. Van Trees, Optimum Array Processing: Part IV of Detection, Estimation, and Modulation Theory. Hoboken, NJ, USA: Wiley, 2004.
Ambiguities in Array Processing
• What is the disadvantage of using linear
arrays?

…… ………………

5
• What is the disadvantage of using linear
arrays?

𝜙
…… ………………

6
• What is the disadvantage of using linear
arrays?

front

…… ………………

back
 This is known as front-back
 There is an ambiguity between
ambiguity
azimuth and lying
angles a linear array is
between
unable to differentiate between
[0o, 180o] and angles between
the two
[180 o sources.
, 360 o
].
 So, the azimuth range of a
linear array is [0o, 180o].
7
Planar
Arrays
z
s(t)

y
 Component of the signal
captured by the planar array
𝜃
x-component:
x
𝜙 y-component:

2𝜋
𝑁

8
[1] H. L. Van Trees, Optimum Array Processing: Part IV of Detection, Estimation, and Modulation Theory. Hoboken, NJ, USA: Wiley, 2004.
 Up
y

 Component of the signal captured by the planar array

x-component:
𝜙 x y-component:

 There is an ambiguity between elevation angles lying

between [0o, 90o] and angles between [0o, -90o].

−𝜃  This is known as up-down ambiguity and a planar

array is unable to differentiate between the two
sources.
s(t)  So, the azimuth range of a linear array is [0o, 360o], but
the elevation range is only [0o, 90o].
-z
Above the array

Down

Below the array 9

3-D Arrays

 Unique signal component captured from any

direction.

 No ambiguities.

 Complete azimuthal and elevation coverage.

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https://www.acoustic-camera.com/en/products/microphone-arrays.html.
Signal Model in the Spatial Domain

11
[2] Boaz Rafaely, Fundamentals of spherical array processing, vol. 16, Springer, 2018.
12
Array Model: For a Single Source
In vector form
+

𝑠(𝑡 − 𝜏 𝑁 )
Steering Vector 𝜂𝑁(𝑡)

𝑠(𝑡 )
𝑥 𝑁 (𝑡 )

𝑠(𝑡 − 𝜏 1)
𝜂 1 (𝑡 )

𝑥1 (𝑡 )
13
[2] Boaz Rafaely, Fundamentals of spherical array processing, vol. 16, Springer, 2018.
Array Signal Model - For Multiple Sources
𝑠(𝑡 − 𝜏 𝑁 )
(𝜃2 ,𝜙 ¿ ¿2)¿ 𝑛𝑁 ( 𝑡 ) (𝜃1 ,𝜙 ¿ ¿1)¿ Array Covariance Matrix

𝑥 𝑁 (𝑡 )

𝑠(𝑡 − 𝜏 1) (𝜃 𝐿 ,𝜙 ¿ ¿ 𝐿)¿

[ ]
𝑛1 (𝑡 )
E [ 𝑥1 𝑥1 ] E [ 𝑥1 𝑥2 ]
𝐻 𝐻 𝐻
E[ 𝑥1 𝑥 𝑁 ]
𝑥1 (𝑡 ) ⋯ ⋯⋯
E [ 𝑥2 𝑥1 ] E [ 𝑥2 𝑥2 ] E[ 𝑥2 𝑥 𝐻
𝐻 𝐻
𝑁]

𝐑= ⋮⋮ ⋮
+ ⋮⋮ ⋱ ⋮
⋮⋮ ⋮
E [ 𝑥𝑁 𝑥1 ] E [ 𝑥 𝑁 𝑥2 ]
𝐻 𝐻 𝐻
⋯ ⋯⋯ E [𝑥 𝑁 𝑥 𝑁]

In practice, the actual covariance matrix is not

available,
𝒂𝟏 (𝜃1 ,𝜙 ¿ ¿1)¿ 𝒂 𝑳 (𝜃 𝐿 ,𝜙 ¿ ¿ 𝐿)¿ so, the sample covariance matrix is used
𝑇
^ 1
𝑹= ∑ 𝐱 ( 𝑡 ) 𝐱 ( 𝑡 )
𝐻
𝑇 𝑡=1
Steering Matrix ( 14
(collection of steering vectors) where is the # of snapshots
[2] Boaz Rafaely, Fundamentals of spherical array processing, vol. 16, Springer, 2018.
Proposed 3D Array Structure

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 Proposed Array Structure

𝑑𝑧
⊕
𝑑𝑦
𝑑𝑥

Difference coarray of the

Structure of the proposed 3D array for 16
proposed array structure
Underdetermined Source Localization using the proposed 3D Nested
Array
Motivation: Non-uniform sparse arrays like nested arrays have the ability to estimate the direction-of-
arrival (DOA) of more sources than the number of sensors.

This is done by exploiting the increased Degrees-of-freedom (DOF) of the difference coarray of
these arrays.

Goal:
• We extend the nested array configuration to three dimensional geometry to cover the entire azimuth and
elevation range. The proposed 3D sparse array is made from three orthogonal nested array branches and the final
structure is composed of a direct sum of these three branches.
• We study the structure and geometry of the difference coarray of the proposed array and extend the coarray based
DOA estimation algorithm to 3D arrays.
• We propose a computationally efficient way to construct the full rank coarray covariance matrix for 3D
sparse arrays.
• We also derive the unconditional Cramer-Rao Bound (CRB) for 3D sparse array signal model.

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• Once again, the covariance matrix of the signal received by the array is given by:

The second-order statistics of the signal

• The element of the covariance matrix is given by captured by the array depends on the
difference of the position vectors of the
sensors instead of the actual sensor vectors

𝐷𝑖𝑓𝑓𝑒𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒 𝐶𝑜𝑎𝑟𝑟𝑎𝑦 𝑜𝑓 𝑡h𝑒 𝐴𝑟𝑟𝑎𝑦

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[3] Piya Pal and Palghat P Vaidyanathan, “Nested arrays: A novel approach to array processing with enhanced degrees of freedom,” IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, vol. 58, no. 8, pp. 4167–4181, 2010.
Difference Coarray of the proposed 3D Array

Difference coarray of the

proposed array structure

The total number of virtual sensors in the

difference coarray (DOF of the coarray) is

 The maximum DOF of a difference coarray can be May reduce due to redundancies.
 We exploit this increase in DOF can be exploited to perform underdetermined source localization 19
Coarray Signal Model

 This represents the

Coarray signal model.

 The drawback of the Coarray model is that the

effective signal is a single snapshot signal. As a
result, the covariance matrix of will be of rank 1.

 As a result, traditional subspace based DOA

estimation algorithms would fail. We propose a
computationally efficient way to recover the rank of
 Coarray steering vector the coarray covariance matrix instead of using
spatial smoothing .

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Coarray Spatial Smoothing

Spatial smoothing is performed by dividing into subarrays

each with elements averaging the covariance matrices of all
the subarrays.

The covariance matrix of the subarray is

The final smoothed coarray covariance matrix is given by

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Proposed Coarray Rank Recovery

Create a three-fold Toeplitz matrix directly using elements of

Therefore, the eigenvectors of span the

same subspace as that of . So, we can
apply coarray MUSIC algorithm directly to
whose spectrum is given by

Steering vector
noise subspace of corresponding to
the first subarray

) gives peaks at the location of the DOAs

Then, we prove that of the sources.

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Simulation Results

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Simulation Results

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Conclusion
 A 3D sparse nested sensor array configuration was presented that is capable of performing
underdetermined source localization in the entire azimuth and elevation range.

 The 3D nested array is designed is such a manner that its difference coarray is hole free and as such
subspace-based method can be applied after performing a 3D spatial smoothing type operation to construct
the coarray covariance matrix.

 A computationally efficient technique to construct the rank recovered coarray covariance matrix was
introduced.

 The CRB for underdetermined source localization using 3D sparse arrays was derived.

 Comparing the performance of the proposed configuration with dense arrays shows its advantages and the
usefulness.

Future Work
 In the future, a general lattice based 3D nested array configuration will be studied.

 Another important direction would be to use the proposed array for beamforming applications and wideband
sources.
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Key References
[1] H. L. Van Trees, Optimum Array Processing: Part IV of Detection, Estimation, and Modulation Theory. Hoboken, NJ, USA: Wiley,
2004.
[2] P. Pal and P. P. Vaidyanathan, “Nested arrays: A novel approach to array processing with enhanced degrees of freedom,” IEEE Trans.
Signal Process., vol. 58, no. 8, pp. 4167–4181, Aug. 2010.
[3] P. P. Vaidyanathan and P. Pal, “Sparse sensing with co-prime samplers and arrays,” IEEE Trans. Signal Process., vol. 59, no. 2, pp. 573–
586, Feb. 2011.
[4] C. P. Mathews and M. D. Zoltowski, “Eigenstructure techniques for 2-D angle estimation with uniform circular arrays,” IEEE Trans.
Signal Process., vol. 42, no. 9, pp. 2395–2407, Sep. 1994.
[5] T. Basikolo, K. Ichige, and H. Arai, “Direction of arrival estimation for quasi-stationary signals using nested circular array,” in Proc. 4th
Int. Workshop Compressed Sens. Theory Appl. Radar, Sonar Remote Sens., 2016, pp. 193–196.
[6] C. Li, L. Gan, and C. Ling, “3D coprime arrays in sparse sensing,” in Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. Acoust., Speech Signal Process., 2019, pp.
4200-4204.
[7] P. Pal and P. Vaidyanathan, “Nested arrays in two dimensions, Part II: Application in two dimensional array processing,” IEEE Trans.
Signal Process., vol. 60, no. 9, pp. 4706–4718, 2012.
[8] C.-L. Liu and P. Vaidyanathan, “Remarks on the spatial smoothing step in coarray MUSIC,” IEEE Signal Process. Lett., vol. 22, no. 9,
pp. 1438–1442, 2015.
[9] M. Wang and A. Nehorai, “Coarrays, music, and the Cramer–Rao Bound,” IEEE Trans. Signal Process., vol. 65, no. 4, pp. 933–946,
2016.
[10] S. M. Kay, Fundamentals of statistical signal processing: estimation theory. Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1993..
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Thank You

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