New approach to source detection in passive listening

To derive higher spatial resolution processor a modern trend is to modelize the noisefield as a global entity depending on a few parameters to be estimated simultaneously. A quantity wich plays a central part is the number of sources to take into account in the model ; for this multiple hypothesis testing problem a detection test is suggested when no a priori information is available on the wavefront shape. An even more important byproduct of this study allows to argue on the optimality of the spectral matrix eigensystem decomposition methods. Simulation results show how much is paid the increase of robustness of the new detection method.