Detection of fully correlated signals by the MDL principle

The authors present a novel approach to the problem of detecting the number of sources impinging on a passive sensor array. The approach is applicable also to the case of fully correlated sources appearing, for example, in specular multipath propagation. Two slightly different detection criteria, both based on the minimum description length (MDL) principle and both requiring the estimation of the locations of the sources, are presented. The first is tailored to the detection problem per se, while the other is tailored to the combined detection-estimation problem. The authors prove the consistency of the two criteria and demonstrate their performance by simulation results