High-resolution direction finding of non-stationary signals using matching pursuit

•A high-resolution DOA estimation method, named MP-MUSIC, is developed based on matching pursuit.•MP-MUSIC achieves improves performance through signal enhancement and source discrimination.•MP-MUSIC has a number of advantages over time–frequency MUSIC.•The SNR performance of matching pursuit coefficients is analyzed.

One of the main goals of time–frequency (TF) signal representations in non-stationary array processing is to equip multi-antenna receivers with the ability to separate sources in the TF domain prior to direction finding. This permits high-resolution direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation of individual sources and of more sources than sensors. In this paper, we use linear decomposition of sensor data based on matching pursuit (MP). The leading atoms of the MP, which capture most of the source TF signatures, can be different for different sources and, as such, provide the desired source discrimination. The MP coefficients with high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and corresponding to the leading decomposition atoms are used to develop the MP-MUSIC DOA estimation for non-stationary source signals. We demonstrate the source discriminatory capability of the proposed technique using linear FM, nonlinear FM, and other non-stationary signals. Further, we compare MP-MUSIC performance with conventional MUSIC and the time–frequency MUSIC, which incorporates bilinear transforms.