Detection of continuous-time quaternion signals in additive noise

Different kinds of quaternion signal detection problems in continuous-time by using a widely linear processing are dealt with. The suggested solutions are based on an extension of the Karhunen-Loève expansion to the quaternion domain which provides uncorrelated scalar real-valued random coefficients. This expansion presents the notable advantage of transforming the original four-dimensional eigen problem to a one-dimensional problem. Firstly, we address the problem of detecting a quaternion deterministic signal in quaternion Gaussian noise and a version of Pitcher’s Theorem is given. Also the particular case of a general quaternion Wiener noise is studied and an extension of the Cameron-Martin formula is presented. Finally, the problem of detecting a quaternion random signal in quaternion white Gaussian noise is tackled. In such a case, it is shown that the detector depends on the quaternion widely linear estimator of the signal.