Resumen
Near-field interference suppression for a towed linear array (TLA) is investigated in this paper. The existing eigencomponent association (ECA) scheme and multiple signal classification interference suppression (MUSIC-IS) scheme require the prior information of a target bearing in order to achieve satisfactory performance. To improve this, we propose the use of an enhanced ECA (EECA) scheme that achieves interference suppression in a non-cooperative scenario. It identifies non-target eigenvectors by scanning the tail direction zone of the TLA. With the non-target-only eigenvectors subtracted, the beam power spectrum of the EECA manifests null troughs at the target bearings. Numerical simulations show the superiority of the EECA method. This method can effectively suppress strong interference without prior information, capture a target even at a low signal-to-interference (SIR) level of -25 dB, and obtain dozens of dB processing gains compared to the ECA and MUSIC-IS.