Rearranged coprime array to increase degrees of freedom and reduce mutual coupling

Coprime array for direction of arrivals finding has attracted increasing interest since it can provide enhanced degrees of freedom. However, due to the holes in the difference coarray, the available information is not fully exploited. In this paper, we propose a rearranged coprime array configuration to fill the holes in the coprime difference coarray. The proposed new array allows filling the holes and reducing the mutual coupling effect at the same time. We classify all the holes in a holes-triangle as a design guideline for the proposed rearranged coprime array. Few redundant sensors of the generalized coprime array are rearranged at sparse positions, which are determined by the position of holes. By doing so, the consecutive part of the conventional coprime difference coarray can be significantly increased. Meanwhile, the mutual coupling can also be dramatically reduced because the redundant sensors are relocated at remote positions. Simulation results verify the superiority of the proposed array compared with other sparse arrays. (C) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.