Instantaneous frequency estimation using the cross Wigner-Ville distribution with application to nonstationary transient detection

A method based on an iterative procedure incorporating time-frequency distributions (TFDs) is proposed for instantaneous frequency (IF) estimation of rapidly time-varying signals. This method is then applied to the problem of adaptively detecting a transient of unknown waveshape in white Gaussian noise. For this type of adaptive detection, the signal´s time-frequency representation is first estimated, and this estimate is used as the true representation in a time-frequency correlator detector. The IF is assumed to be a critical feature of the transient. Accordingly, the IF is first estimated, and this estimate is then used as an aid to estimate the time-frequency representation of the true signal. This representation is then correlated with the time-frequency representation of the observed signal to provide the appropriate detection statistics