Robust source number enumeration for r-dimensional arrays in case of brief sensor failures

There has been much activity on model selection for multi-dimensional data in recent years under the assumption of a Gaussian noise distribution. However, methods which are optimal for Gaussian noise are very sensitive against brief sensor failures. We suggest two robust model order selection schemes for multi-dimensional data based on the MM-estimator of the covariance of the r-mode unfoldings of the complex valued data tensor. Simulation results are given for 2-D and 3-D uniform rectangular arrays based source enumeration, both for Gaussian noise and a brief sensor failure.