Sparsity-Aware Adaptive Directional Time–Frequency Distribution for Source Localization

Multi-component characteristics and missing data samples introduce artifacts and cross-terms in quadratic time–frequency distributions, thus affecting their readability. In this study, we propose a new time–frequency method that employs directional smoothing and compressive sensing to reduce cross-terms and mitigate artifacts associated with missing samples. The efficacy of the proposed time–frequency distribution for solving real-life problems is illustrated by employing it to estimate direction of arrival of sparsely sampled sources in under-determined scenario. Numerical results show that the proposed method is superior to other state-of-the-art methods both in terms of obtaining clear time–frequency representation and accurately estimating direction of arrival.