On estimating the number of sources with a frequency-hopped signaling sensor array

Frequency-hopped signaling is proposed to improve the estimation of the number of diversely moving sources/targets by a sensor array. Information-theoretic criteria are employed in the analysis, and simulation results are presented. It is shown that, by appropriately designing the pulse period and the subpulse frequencies, the system performance using frequency-hopped signaling is much better than that of the conventional array with a monotone frequency when the element signal-to-noise ratio is above a certain threshold. For a given system bandwidth, the noise performance saturates when the number of frequency hops becomes large