Robust Adaptive Trimming for High-Resolution Direction Finding

The presence of impulsive noise can severely degrade the accuracy performance of conventional direction of arrival (DOA) estimation algorithms, such as MUSIC and ESPIRIT. We propose a two-stage robust adaptive trimming approach. We first apply Shapiro-Wilk's goodness-of-fit W test for Gaussianity, as a preprocessing stage. We then robustly estimate the covariance matrix in order to minimize the impact of impulsive noise on conventional DOA estimation algorithms. Numerical simulations are presented to illustrate the efficacy of the proposed approach for high resolution direction finding in highly-impulsive environments.