Approximating time-frequency density functions via optimal combinations of spectrograms

We demonstrate that two previously proposed methods for combining the information content from multiple spectrograms into a single, positive time-frequency function are optimal in a cross-entropy sense. The goal in combining the spectrograms is to obtain an improved approximation of the joint time-frequency signal density by overcoming limitations of any single spectrogram. An example of each method is provided, and results are compared with spectrograms and a Cohen-Posch (1985) time-frequency density (TFD) of a nonstationary pulsed tone signal. The proposed combinations are effective and can be efficiently computed.<>