A single antenna ambient noise cancellation method for in-situ radiated EMI measurements in the time-domain

This paper presents a single antenna ambient noise cancellation method for in-situ radiated emissions measurements performed using an entirely time-domain approach and the sliding window Empirical Mode Decomposition. The method requires a pair of successive measurements, an initial one for characterizing the ambient noise and a final one for the EMI measurement in the presence of ambient noise. The method assumes the spectral content of the ambient noise is stable between both measurements. The measured time-domain EMI is decomposed into a finite set of intrinsic mode functions. Some modes contain the ambient noise signals while other modes contain the actual components of the EMI. A brute-force search algorithm determines which mode, or combination of modes, maximize the absolute difference between the magnitude of their spectrum and the ambient noise levels for every frequency bin in the measurement bandwidth. Experimental results show the effectiveness of this method for attenuating several ambient noise signals in the 30 MHz – 1 GHz band.Postprint (published version

Analyse des signaux AM-FM basée sur une version B-splines de l'EMD-ESA

In this paper a signal analysis framework for estimating time-varying amplitude and frequency functions of multicomponent amplitude and frequency modulated (AM–FM) signals is introduced. This framework is based on local and non-linear approaches, namely Energy Separation Algorithm (ESA) and Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD). Conjunction of Discrete ESA (DESA) and EMD is called EMD–DESA. A new modified version of EMD where smoothing instead of an interpolation to construct the upper and lower envelopes of the signal is introduced. Since extracted IMFs are represented in terms of B-spline (BS) expansions, a closed formula of ESA robust against noise is used. Instantaneous Frequency (IF) and Instantaneous Amplitude (IA) estimates of a multi- component AM–FM signal, corrupted with additive white Gaussian noise of varying SNRs, are analyzed and results compared to ESA, DESA and Hilbert transform-based algorithms. SNR and MSE are used as figures of merit. Regularized BS version of EMD– ESA performs reasonably better in separating IA and IF components compared to the other methods from low to high SNR. Overall, obtained results illustrate the effective- ness of the proposed approach in terms of accuracy and robustness against noise to track IF and IA features of a multicomponent AM–FM signal

Application of the Hilbert-Huang Transform to the Search for Gravitational Waves

We present the application of a novel method of time-series analysis, the Hilbert-Huang Transform, to the search for gravitational waves. This algorithm is adaptive and does not impose a basis set on the data, and thus the time-frequency decomposition it provides is not limited by time-frequency uncertainty spreading. Because of its high time-frequency resolution it has important applications to both signal detection and instrumental characterization. Applications to the data analysis of the ground and space based gravitational wave detectors, LIGO and LISA, are described

Computing frequency by using generalized zero-crossing applied to intrinsic mode functions

This invention presents a method for computing Instantaneous Frequency by applying Empirical Mode Decomposition to a signal and using Generalized Zero-Crossing (GZC) and Extrema Sifting. The GZC approach is the most direct, local, and also the most accurate in the mean. Furthermore, this approach will also give a statistical measure of the scattering of the frequency value. For most practical applications, this mean frequency localized down to quarter of a wave period is already a well-accepted result. As this method physically measures the period, or part of it, the values obtained can serve as the best local mean over the period to which it applies. Through Extrema Sifting, instead of the cubic spline fitting, this invention constructs the upper envelope and the lower envelope by connecting local maxima points and local minima points of the signal with straight lines, respectively, when extracting a collection of Intrinsic Mode Functions (IMFs) from a signal under consideration

Application of the Empirical Mode Decomposition and Hilbert-Huang Transform to Seismic Reflection Data

Advancements in signal processing may allow for improved imaging and analysis of complex geologic targets found in seismic reflection data. A recent contribution to signal processing is the empirical mode decomposition (EMD) which combines with the Hilbert transform as the Hilbert- Huang transform (HHT). The EMD empirically reduces a time series to several subsignals, each of which is input to the same time-frequency environment via the Hilbert transform. The HHT allows for signals describing stochastic or astochastic processes to be analyzed using instantaneous attributes in the time-frequency domain. The HHT is applied herein to seismic reflection data to: (1) assess the ability of the EMD and HHT to quantify meaningful geologic information in the time and time-frequency domains, and (2) use instantaneous attributes to develop superior filters for improving the signal-to-noise ratio. The objective of this work is to determine whether the HHT allows for empirically-derived characteristics to be used in filter design and application, resulting in better filter performance and enhanced signal-to-noise ratio. Two data sets are used to show successful application of the EMD and HHT to seismic reflection data processing. Nonlinear cable strum is removed from one data set while the other is used to show how the HHT compares to and outperforms Fourier-based processing under certain conditions

A NOISE ESTIMATION SCHEME FOR BLIND SPECTRUM SENSING USING EMD

The scarcity of spectral resources in wireless communications, due to a fixed frequency allocation policy, is a strong limitation to the increasing demand for higher data rates. One solution is to use underutilized spectrum. Cognitive Radio (CR) technologies identify transmission opportunities in unused channels and avoid interfering with primary users. The key enabling technology is the Spectrum Sensing (SS). Different SS techniques exist, but techniques that do not require knowledge of the signals (non-coherent) are preferred. Noise estimation plays an essential role in enhancing the performance of non-coherent spectrum sensors such as energy detectors. In this thesis, we present an energy detector based on the behavior of Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD) towards vacant channels (noise-dominant). The energy trend from the EMD processed signal is used to determine the occupancy of a given band of interest. The performance of the proposed EMD-based detector is evaluated for different noise levels and sample sizes. Further, a comparison is carried out with conventional spectrum sensing techniques to validate the efficacy of the proposed detector and the results revealed that it outperforms the other sensing methods

Empirical Mode Decomposition Operator for Dewowing GPR Data

Signal processing tools available to ground penetrating radar data used for shallow subsurface imaging and hydrogeophysical parameter estimation are significantly handled using the same tools available to seismic reflection data. Overall, the same tools produce interpretable images from both data types, but particular noise (wow noise) in electromagnetic data must be removed before stable and accurate quantitative results can be produced. Wow noise is an inherent, nonlinear electromagnetic interference and a significant component of GPR data. Further, the nonlinear and non-stationary nature of wow noise provides a strong argument for preprocessing radar traces with time-domain operators. Time-domain operators designed for nonlinear signals are under increasing development for both electromagnetic and acoustic signal processing. This work demonstrates optimal wow noise removal from ground penetrating radar data using the empirical mode decomposition. The technique provides a data-driven approach to empirically dewowing GPR data