Time-Frequency Feature Analysis

Most of the real-world signals in nature are non-stationary, i.e., their statistics are time variant. Extracting the time-varying frequency characteristics of a signal is very important in understanding the signal better, which could be of immense use in various applications such as pattern recognition and automated-decision making systems. In order to extract meaningful time-frequency (TF) features, a joint TF analysis is required. The proposed work is an attempt to develop a generalized TF analysis methodology that exploits the benefits of TF distribution (TFD) in pattern classification systems as related to discriminant feature detection and classification. Our objective is to introduce a unique and efficient way of performing non-stationary signal analysis using adaptive and discriminant TF techniques. To fulfill this objective, in the first point, we build a novel TF matrix (TFM) decomposition that increases the effectiveness of segmentation in real-world signals. Instantaneous and unique features are extracted from each segment such that they successfully represent joint TF structure of the signal. In the second point, based on the above technique, two unique and novel discriminant TF analysis methods are proposed to perform an improved and discriminant feature selection of any non-stationary signals. The first approach is a new machine learning method that identifies the clusters of the discriminant features to compute the presence of the discriminative pattern in any given signal, and classify them accordingly. The second approach is a discriminant TFM (DTFM) framework, which is a combination of TFM decomposition and the discriminant clustering techniques. The developed DTFM analysis automatically identifies the differences between different classes as the distinguishing structure, and uses the identified structure to accurately classify and locate the discriminant structure in the signal. The theoretical properties of the proposed approaches pertaining to pattern recognition and detection are examined in this dissertation. The extracted TF features provide strong and successful characterization and classification of real and synthetic non-stationary signals. The proposed TF techniques facilitate the adaptation of TF quantification to any feature detection technique in automating the identification process of discriminatory TF features, and can find applications in many different fields including biomedical and multimedia signal processing.