40

and the TF signai is essentially stationary over the window's time span [80]. The
shorter duration of the analysis window is what constitutes the short-time nature
of the STFT.
The expression for the discrete-time sTFT at any time n is given by,

s(",

f):

,,I""

s(m)w(n

m)e-i2nr'n

(21)

Therefore, the discrete sTFT is obtained by frequency sampling as,

S(n,k):

^9(t,

f) lf=fi3:nT

Q2)

Where N is the total number of data points in the window and is the frequency
sampling factor.

Substituting Equati on (22) into Equation (21) we obtain the following discrete
STFT,

S(n,k)

: t

s(m)w(n

m)e=ilP-

An important tradeoff in short-time spectral analysis is time versus

(23)
frequency

resolution. Good time resolution requires short duration windows u;(t) whereas
good. frequency resolution necessitates long

duration windows [85]. This tradeoff is

what is known as Heisenberg uncertainty principle.

Var(S(ju)) * Var(s(t))

>-

(24)

where Var(.) denotes the variance, and C is a constant.

Wigner Distribution (WD)

A time-frequency characteristic of a signal that overcomes the above mentioned
uncertainty is the Wigner distribution (WD).

It

is a bilinear transformation which

4T

maps a one dimensional (1-D) time-frequency signal into a two-dimensional (2-

D) time-frequency

characteri

mechanics by Wigner

properties that make

in

it

zation. This was originally developed in quantum

1932 [81]. This signal transformation has many desirable

an ideal tool for TF signal analysis [S2].

It

also plays the role

of a generalization of spectral density function for nonstationary random process.

The Wigner distribution function is given by,

w(t,u)

l:s(r * )eA - |)"-i,, a,

(25)

where the overbar symbol denotes complex conjugation. The WD presumes

the time-varying nature or nonstationarities of the signal. and provides information
concerning the instantaneous frequency of signals.

It

does not suffer from the time

versus frequency tradeoff problems of short-time fourier transform technique

[82].

The Wigner distribution also presumes the temporal and spectral support of the
signal as well as time and frequency domain

shifts. A relation exists

between

the STFT and WD where the squared magnitude of the STFT is equal to the
convolution of the WD of the signal with the WD of the window tu(t)
[g3] (the
window of STFT or WD as they are same), that is,

where W" and

:*
II

lS"(f,

r)l'

W'-

ate the Wigner distribution of the windowed signal and the

W"(r,rDrv-(t

r,w

- ridrdrt.

(26)

window respectively. The rectangular windowed discrete-time Wigner distribution

(WD) of the signal s(n) is formally defined by,

L

W(n, u) : t
w(m)s(n * m)s(n m=-L
Thus

it

m)e-izum

(27)

is seen from the above equation that the WD is an explicit function of

n, the windows time center and o, the frequency variable. The segment window

-lI{

A.\

*(*)

I in the interval of [n _ L,n *I]. If the

is of n'idth 2L +

windowed signal is

to be statisticalry stationary then the above

equation can be considered
as the spectral behavior in the signal's correlation
domain
assumed

[g4].

The wigner distribution is a real valued periodic

function of frequency with a
period of normalized digital frequency 0.5. For
a symmetric window, the discrete
Wigner distribution algorithm is given by replacing,
bV T.

W"(n,n,

:
:,

u(m)s(n

m)s(n

- m)e='**!

-tll(0)l'@)l'+ 2n

I w@)s(n + m)s(n _ m)e#,

rn:0

(28)

0<&<ir/-1
where

* : ff;& :

0,

r,2,...,rtr -

1 and span over one period.

ft

designates

the rear part of the operator,

* is digitar frequency, $ i, th" normalized digitar

frequency, and n is the data window center
time. From the above equation it is

apparent that FFT algorithm can be applied

to efltciently compute the discrete
WD sampled values.

Let n be the set of window center times as

it moves along the entire data
length, where

n {nttv2t,..,nU}
and M is the number of steps of the overlapped
moving window up to the ultimate
position of the data length. The value of
M can be controlled by controliing the
window width L or by controlling the step
size of the window as it moves along
the entire data length' The step size can
be somewhere between r to 2Ldepending
upon the percentage of data is allowed to
overlap in successive computation.
These
two paramet'et L and M must be chosen based
on both signal representation within
the window and computational time. After
evaluation of the wD, an NxM wD