We present an effective quadratic time-frequency S-method based approach in conjunction with the Viterbi algorithm to extract m-D features. The effectiveness of the S-method in extracting m-D features is demonstrated through the application to indoor and outdoor experimental data sets such as rotating fan and human gait. The Viterbi algorithm for the instantaneous frequency estimation is used to enhance the weak human micro-Doppler features in relatively high noise environments. As such, this paper contributes additional experimental micro-Doppler data and analysis, which should help in developing a better picture of the human gait micro-Doppler research and its applications to indoor and outdoor imaging and automatic gait recognition systems.