Minimum variance spectral estimation for broadband source location using steered covariance matrices

An approach is presented for reducing the threshold observation time required to perform high resolution broadband bearing estimation. The proposed technique is based on a space-time statistic called the steered covariance matrix (STCM). In broadband settings, the STCM has an advantage over the well-known cross-spectral density matrix (CSDM) in that it can be estimated with much greater statistical stability. The STCM is used in conjunction with minimum variance spectral estimation to obtain a broadband spatial spectral estimate with a much lower threshold observation time than the CSDM-based minimum-variance distortionless response (MVDR) method