  A maximum-likelihood method is presented for estimating the power spectrum of
anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) from interferometer
observations. The method calculates flat band-power estimates in separate bins
in l-space, together with confidence intervals on the power in each bin. For
multifrequency data, the power spectrum of the other foreground components may
also be recovered. Advantage is taken of several characteristic properties of
interferometer data, which together allow the fast calculation of the
likelihood function. The method may be applied to single-field or mosaiced
observations, and proper account can be taken of non-coplanar baselines. The
method is illustrated by application to simulated data from the Very Small
Array.
