A fast method for computing the coarray of sparse linear arrays

A fast algorithm for computing the coarray of sparse linear arrays is presented. Deriving linear minimum redundancy arrays or linear minimum hole arrays involves huge searches over candidate arrays to determine which arrays have the desired coarray characteristics. Since the number of candidate arrays grows very large with increasing numbers of sensors, it is important to be able to check each array´s coarray quickly so that the search does not take too long. The method presented for computing coarrays is considerably faster than existing methods. This algorithm is well suited to implementation on a digital computer-it exploits the fact that integer multiplication is equivalent to convolution of the integer´s representations