Experimental analysis of structured covariance estimators with missing data

The problem of missing sensor measurements can emerge in a variety of radar signal processing applications as for instance beamforming, direction of arrival estimation, interference cancellation, and target detection. The mentioned applications rely on reliable data covariance matrix estimates and suitable procedures, based on the expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm, have been proposed in the open literature to cope with the lack of some entries within specific spatial snapshots. In this paper, the effectiveness of a recent structured covariance matrix estimator [1], accounting for missing data and leveraging possible structural knowledge, is assessed on measured data. Specifically, the estimation procedure is framed in the context of two practically relevant radar applications: beamforming and detection of the number of sources. At the analysis stage, results highlight the effectiveness of the procedure to tackle missing data in the considered radar scenarios.