Adaptive multimode signal reconstruction from time-frequency representations

This paper discusses methods for the adaptive reconstruction of the modes of multicomponent AM-FM signals by their time-frequency (TF) representation derived from their short-time Fourier transform (STFT). The STFT of an AM-FM component or mode spreads the information relative to that mode in the TF plane around curves commonly called ridges. An alternative view is to consider a mode as a particular TF domain termed a basin of attraction. Here we discuss two new approaches to mode reconstruction. The first determines the ridge associated with a mode by considering the location where the direction of the reassignment vector sharply changes, the technique used to determine the basin of attraction being directly derived from that used for ridge extraction. A second uses the fact that the STFT of a signal is fully characterized by its zeros (and then the particular distribution of these zeros for Gaussian noise) to deduce an algorithm to compute the mode domains. For both techniques, mode reconstruction is then carried out by simply integrating the information inside these basins of attraction or domains.