A comparison of the existence of `cross terms´ in the Wigner distribution and the squared magnitude of the wavelet transform and the short-time Fourier transform

It is shown that cross terms comparable to those found in the Wigner distribution (WD) exist for the energy distributions of the wavelet transform (WT) and the short-time Fourier transform (STFT). The geometry of the cross terms is described by deriving mathematical expressions for the energy distributions of the STFT and the WT of a multicomponent signal. From those mathematical expressions it is inferred that the STFT and the WT cross terms: (1) occur at the intersection of the respective transforms of the two signals under consideration, whereas the WD cross terms occur at mid-time-frequency of the two signals; (2) are oscillatory in nature, as are the WD cross terms, and are modulated by a cosine whose argument is a function of the difference in center times and center frequencies of the signals under consideration; and (3) can have a maximum amplitude as large as twice the product of the magnitude of the transforms of the two signals in question, like WD cross terms. It is shown that the presence of these cross terms could lead to problems in analyzing a multicomponent signal. The consequences of this effect with respect to speech applications are discussed