A Novel Algorithm for Peak Identification in Semi-periodic Signals

In this paper, we propose a novel and general algorithm for peak identification in semi-periodic signals which form an important class of useful signals occurring in several practical applications. The key ideas behind the proposed algorithm will be expounded in the paper. An extensive simulation study was carried out to test the performance of the proposed algorithm. The test bed for our performance analysis was a practical application involving ECG signals recorded from pregnant women, and consisting of identifying the heartbeat signals of both the mother and the fetus. Our proposed algorithm showed excellent results. Encouraged by this excellent performance, we also propose an enhanced version of this algorithm that can be extended to non semi-periodic signals and which will be tested as part of our future work.