Array design for MEM and MLM array processing

Much work has been done on designing arrays for use with conventional beamforming techniques. However, high resolution array processing techniques such as the maximum entropy (MEM) and maximum likelihood (MLM) methods impose different constraints on the array. MEM and MLM operate on measured samples of the correlation function and so are expected to perform better when the correlation function is measured at more and more evenly distributed lags. A uniform array gives redundant lags; the proposed array design technique places the sensors to maximize the number of the resulting lags and to distribute them uniformly. The resulting nonuniform arrays have the property that no nonzero lags are repeated. Simulations demonstrate improved resolution and spectral matching properties when the optimized nonuniform arrays are used with MEM and MLM array processing.