28,553 research outputs found
Detection methods for non-Gaussian gravitational wave stochastic backgrounds
We address the issue of finding an optimal detection method for a
discontinuous or intermittent gravitational wave stochastic background. Such a
signal might sound something like popcorn popping. We derive an appropriate
version of the maximum likelihood detection statistic, and compare its
performance to that of the standard cross-correlation statistic both
analytically and with Monte Carlo simulations. The maximum likelihood statistic
performs better than the cross-correlation statistic when the background is
sufficiently non-Gaussian. For both ground and space based detectors, this
results in a gain factor, ranging roughly from 1 to 3, in the minimum
gravitational-wave energy density necessary for detection, depending on the
duty cycle of the background. Our analysis is exploratory, as we assume that
the time structure of the events cannot be resolved, and we assume white,
Gaussian noise in two collocated, aligned detectors. Before this detection
method can be used in practice with real detector data, further work is
required to generalize our analysis to accommodate separated, misaligned
detectors with realistic, colored, non-Gaussian noise.Comment: 25 pages, 12 figures, submitted to physical review D, added revisions
in response to reviewers comment
Mutual Information and Minimum Mean-square Error in Gaussian Channels
This paper deals with arbitrarily distributed finite-power input signals
observed through an additive Gaussian noise channel. It shows a new formula
that connects the input-output mutual information and the minimum mean-square
error (MMSE) achievable by optimal estimation of the input given the output.
That is, the derivative of the mutual information (nats) with respect to the
signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is equal to half the MMSE, regardless of the input
statistics. This relationship holds for both scalar and vector signals, as well
as for discrete-time and continuous-time noncausal MMSE estimation. This
fundamental information-theoretic result has an unexpected consequence in
continuous-time nonlinear estimation: For any input signal with finite power,
the causal filtering MMSE achieved at SNR is equal to the average value of the
noncausal smoothing MMSE achieved with a channel whose signal-to-noise ratio is
chosen uniformly distributed between 0 and SNR
Data analysis of gravitational-wave signals from spinning neutron stars. III. Detection statistics and computational requirements
We develop the analytic and numerical tools for data analysis of the
gravitational-wave signals from spinning neutron stars for ground-based laser
interferometric detectors. We study in detail the statistical properties of the
optimum functional that need to be calculated in order to detect the
gravitational-wave signal from a spinning neutron star and estimate its
parameters. We derive formulae for false alarm and detection probabilities both
for the optimal and the suboptimal filters. We assess the computational
requirements needed to do the signal search. We compare a number of criteria to
build sufficiently accurate templates for our data analysis scheme. We verify
the validity of our concepts and formulae by means of the Monte Carlo
simulations. We present algorithms by which one can estimate the parameters of
the continuous signals accurately.Comment: LaTeX, 45 pages, 13 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.
An excess power statistic for detection of burst sources of gravitational radiation
We examine the properties of an excess power method to detect gravitational
waves in interferometric detector data. This method is designed to detect
short-duration (< 0.5 s) burst signals of unknown waveform, such as those from
supernovae or black hole mergers. If only the bursts' duration and frequency
band are known, the method is an optimal detection strategy in both Bayesian
and frequentist senses. It consists of summing the data power over the known
time interval and frequency band of the burst. If the detector noise is
stationary and Gaussian, this sum is distributed as a chi-squared (non-central
chi-squared) deviate in the absence (presence) of a signal. One can use these
distributions to compute frequentist detection thresholds for the measured
power. We derive the method from Bayesian analyses and show how to compute
Bayesian thresholds. More generically, when only upper and/or lower bounds on
the bursts duration and frequency band are known, one must search for excess
power in all concordant durations and bands. Two search schemes are presented
and their computational efficiencies are compared. We find that given
reasonable constraints on the effective duration and bandwidth of signals, the
excess power search can be performed on a single workstation. Furthermore, the
method can be almost as efficient as matched filtering when a large template
bank is required. Finally, we derive generalizations of the method to a network
of several interferometers under the assumption of Gaussian noise.Comment: 22 pages, 6 figure
MDL Denoising Revisited
We refine and extend an earlier MDL denoising criterion for wavelet-based
denoising. We start by showing that the denoising problem can be reformulated
as a clustering problem, where the goal is to obtain separate clusters for
informative and non-informative wavelet coefficients, respectively. This
suggests two refinements, adding a code-length for the model index, and
extending the model in order to account for subband-dependent coefficient
distributions. A third refinement is derivation of soft thresholding inspired
by predictive universal coding with weighted mixtures. We propose a practical
method incorporating all three refinements, which is shown to achieve good
performance and robustness in denoising both artificial and natural signals.Comment: Submitted to IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, June 200
Optimizing gravitational-wave searches for a population of coalescing binaries: Intrinsic parameters
We revisit the problem of searching for gravitational waves from inspiralling
compact binaries in Gaussian coloured noise. For binaries with quasicircular
orbits and non-precessing component spins, considering dominant mode emission
only, if the intrinsic parameters of the binary are known then the optimal
statistic for a single detector is the well-known two-phase matched filter.
However, the matched filter signal-to-noise ratio is /not/ in general an
optimal statistic for an astrophysical population of signals, since their
distribution over the intrinsic parameters will almost certainly not mirror
that of noise events, which is determined by the (Fisher) information metric.
Instead, the optimal statistic for a given astrophysical distribution will be
the Bayes factor, which we approximate using the output of a standard template
matched filter search. We then quantify the possible improvement in number of
signals detected for various populations of non-spinning binaries: for a
distribution of signals uniformly distributed in volume and with component
masses distributed uniformly over the range ,
at fixed expected SNR, we find more
signals at a false alarm threshold of Hz in a single detector. The
method may easily be generalized to binaries with non-precessing spins.Comment: Version accepted by Phys. Rev.
New Negentropy Optimization Schemes for Blind Signal Extraction of Complex Valued Sources
Blind signal extraction, a hot issue in the field of communication signal processing, aims to retrieve the sources through the optimization of contrast functions. Many contrasts based on higher-order statistics such as kurtosis, usually behave sensitive to outliers. Thus, to achieve robust results, nonlinear functions are utilized as contrasts to approximate the negentropy criterion, which is also a classical metric for non-Gaussianity. However, existing methods generally have a high computational cost, hence leading us to address the problem of efficient optimization of contrast function. More precisely, we design a novel “reference-based” contrast function based on negentropy approximations, and then propose a new family of algorithms (Alg.1 and Alg.2) to maximize it. Simulations confirm the convergence of our method to a separating solution, which is also analyzed in theory. We also validate the theoretic complexity analysis that Alg.2 has a much lower computational cost than Alg.1 and existing optimization methods based on negentropy criterion. Finally, experiments for the separation of single sideband signals illustrate that our method has good prospects in real-world applications
Data analysis of gravitational-wave signals from spinning neutron stars. IV. An all-sky search
We develop a set of data analysis tools for a realistic all-sky search for
continuous gravitational-wave signals. The methods that we present apply to
data from both the resonant bar detectors that are currently in operation and
the laser interferometric detectors that are in the final stages of
construction and commissioning. We show that with our techniques we shall be
able to perform an all-sky 2-day long coherent search of the narrow-band data
from the resonant bar EXPLORER with no loss of signals with the dimensionless
amplitude greater than .Comment: REVTeX, 26 pages, 1 figure, submitted to Phys. Rev.
- …