Decoupled estimation of DOA and coherence loss for multiple sources in uncertain propagation environments

The problem of direction of arrival (DOA) estimation of multiple sources is addressed considering possible coherence loss along the impinging wavefronts. The loss results from wave propagation through a fluctuating medium and leads to a decreasing signal correlation from sensor to sensor. Two new algorithms are proposed that are significantly less computationally complex than the well known covariance matching (CM) approach. Furthermore a polynomial approximation of the coherence loss parameters is introduced, which pen-nits a decoupling of the DOA estimation from the estimation of all other parameters. The proposed algorithms and theoretical results are verified by numerical examples