A generalized demodulation approach to time-frequency projections for multicomponent signals

In this paper, we introduce a flexible approach for the time-frequency analysis of multicomponent signals involving the use of analytic vectors and demodulation. The demodulated analytic signal is projected onto the time-frequency plane so that, as closely as possible, each component contributes exclusively to a different ‘tile’ in a wavelet packet tiling of the time-frequency plane, and at each time instant, the contribution to each tile definitely comes from no more than one component. A single reverse demodulation is then applied to all projected components. The resulting instantaneous frequency of each component in each tile is not constrained to a set polynomial form in time, and is readily calculated, as is the corresponding Hilbert energy spectrum. Two examples illustrate the method. In order better to understand the effect of additive noise, the approximate variance of the estimated instantaneous frequency in any tile has been formulated by starting with pure noise and studying its evolving covariance structure through each step of the algorithm. The validity and practical utility of the resulting expression for the variance of the estimated instantaneous frequency is demonstrated via a simulation experiment.