Unitary ESPRIT: How to Obtain Increased Estimation Accuracy with a Reduced Computational Burden

ESPRIT is a high-resolution signal parameter estimation technique based on the translational invariance structure of a sensor array. Previous ESPRIT algorithms do not use the fact that the operator representing the phase delays between the two subarrays is unitary. Here, we present a simple and efficient method to constrain the estimated phase factors to the unit circle, if centro-symmetric array configurations are used. Unitary ESPRIT, the resulting closed-form algorithm, has an ESPRIT-like structure except for the fact that it is formulated in terms of real-valued computations throughout. Since the dimension of the matrices is not increased, this completely real-valued algorithm achieves a substantial reduction of the computational complexity. Furthermore, Unitary ESPRIT incorporates forward-backward averaging, leading to an improved performance compared to the standard ESPRIT algorithm, especially for correlated source signals. Like standard ESPRIT, Unitary ESPRIT offers an inexpensive possibility to reconstruct the impinging wavefronts (signal copy). These signal estimates are more accurate, since Unitary ESPRIT improves the underlying signal subspace estimates. Simulations confirm that, even for uncorrelated signals, the standard ESPRIT algorithm needs twice the number of snapshots to achieve a precision comparable to that of Unitary ESPRIT. Thus, Unitary ESPRIT provides increased estimation accuracy with a reduced computational burden.