Symmetric flipped nested array for mixed near‐field and far‐field non‐circular source localisation

Abstract As it is known, existing mixed near‐field and far‐field non‐circular source localisation rely on the uniform linear array (ULA). Compared with the ULA, the sparse array can obtain more consecutive lags and a larger physical array aperture. So a novel symmetric flipped nested array (SFNA) is proposed for mixed near‐field and far‐field non‐circular source localisation. At the same time, according to the special geometry of the array, the non‐circular phase information can be removed and the existing algorithm can be used to solve the problem of sparse array estimating the mixed near‐field and far‐field non‐circular signals. First, by exchanging the positions of the subarrays in the traditional nested array and then flipping them, a new SFNA is formed; second, the authors present the maximum consecutive lags and composition method of SFNA. For example, 4MN +4M −3 consecutive lags can be obtained by using a 2M + 2N −1 array element; third, in the estimation of mixed near‐field and far‐field non‐circular sources, a special cumulant is used to eliminate the range of the mixed near‐field and far‐field non‐circular sources and a one‐dimensional (1‐D) spectral search is used to obtain all the directions of arrival, and the range can be obtained by defining the range spectrum; finally, numerical simulation results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed array.