A Robust and Efficient Algorithm for Coprime Array Adaptive Beamforming

Coprime array offers a larger array aperture than uniform linear array with the same number of physical sensors, and has a better spatial resolution with increased degrees of freedom. However, when it comes to the problem of adaptive beamforming, the existing adaptive beamforming algorithms designed for the general array cannot take full advantage of coprime feature offered by the coprime array. In this paper, we propose a novel coprime array adaptive beamforming algorithm, where both robustness and efficiency are well balanced. Specifically, we first decompose the coprime array into a pair of sparse uniform linear subarrays and process their received signals separately. According to the property of coprime integers, the direction-of-arrival (DOA) can be uniquely estimated for each source by matching the super-resolution spatial spectra of the pair of sparse uniform linear subarrays. Further, a joint covariance matrix optimization problem is formulated to estimate the power of each source. The estimated DOAs and their corresponding power are utilized to reconstruct the interference-plus-noise covariance matrix and estimate the signal steering vector. Theoretical analyses are presented in terms of robustness and efficiency, and simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed coprime array adaptive beamforming algorithm.