Emitter number estimation from pulse trains using the GIC

An information theoretic criterion based approach for estimating the number of emitters from a set of interleaved pulse trains is proposed. In the approach, a new pulse signal model is formulated to handle large number of pulses. The approach is based on the application of the general information criteria (GIC) and has the advantage of not requiring any threshold setting procedures. When compared with classical information theoretic criterion based approaches, the GIC-based approach is more flexible, and it does not involve any computationally sophisticated maximum likelihood estimator. Computer simulations are used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.