Source number detection with nested arrays and ULAs using jackknifing

We consider the problem of source number detection based on uniform linear arrays (ULAs) and the recently proposed nested arrays. A ULA with N sensors can detect at most N - 1 sources, whereas a nested array provides O(N²) degrees of freedom with O(N) sensors, enabling us to detect K sources with N<K sensors. In order to make full use of the available limited valuable data, we propose a novel strategy, which is inspired by the jackknifing resampling method. Exploiting numerous iterations of subsets of the whole data set, this strategy helps the existing detection methods achieve great improvements. Numerical simulations demonstrate the advantage of our strategy, both for ULAs and nested arrays.