MMSE-Based MDL Method for Accurate Source Number Estimation

In civilian communication systems, the signature sequence of the desired signal in training phase is known to the receiver. In this letter, using the mutual information, we bridge the probability density function and minimum mean-square error (MMSE) between the observed data and training sequence of the desired signal, and then employ the MMSE to construct a minimum description length (MDL) criterion for accurate source enumeration. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed method is superior to existing MDL methods in terms of detection performance particularly for small number of snapshots and/or source angular separation.