Performance weighted blending of nested array processors

Nested arrays consist of two uniform subarrays: a short aperture array with half-wavelength spacing and a long aperture array with greater than half-wavelength spacing. Two approaches for estimating the scanned response require computing either the product or the minimum of the subarray responses in each look direction. In multi-source environments, the multiplicative and min scanned responses may be corrupted by cross terms [Wage, Acoustics Today (2018)]. When the sources are uncorrelated, snapshot averaging is often used to mitigate cross term interference. The min processor's response can contain cross terms that do not decay with snapshot averaging. Alternatively, the multiplicative processor’s response contains cross terms that decay, though large numbers of snapshots may be required for the cross terms to fall below the level of those in the min processor. This talk proposes a performance weighted combination of the two processors based on Buck and Singer's (IEEE, 2018) blended dominant mode rejection beamformer. The same performance weighting function can be used to combine the nested multiplicative and min processors. The resulting universal processor adjusts the weighting in each look direction as the number of snapshots increases to favor the multiplicative processor as its cross terms average out. [Work supported by ONR]