A cross-terms geometry based method for components instantaneous frequency estimation using the Cross Wigner-Ville distribution

A novel method for the signal components instantaneous frequency (IF) estimation based on the CrossWigner-Ville distribution (XWVD) is presented. The cross-terms in the XWVD are deliberately formed between the analyzed signal and a reference signal. The proposed method yields a scaled and time shifted image that closely resembles the instantaneous frequency laws of the components present in the signal. As the interferences location follow geometrical rules, and by using a reference signal well localized in time and frequency, the time-frequency coordinates of the analyzed signal components IF can be calculated by an automatic procedure described below. The performance of the method is tested on both synthetic and real-life signals, showing improvements over another recently proposed components extraction method.