A high precision time-frequency analysis method

To analysis the signal whose frequency changes as time, this article presents a new time-frequency analysis method based on short-time fractional Fourier transform (FRFT) and integration of midpoints. This method uses window functions to divide the signal to many pieces, then the FRFT is used to calculate the frequency modulation (FM) rate of each piece. A chirp signal can be built based on the FM rate and the intermediate frequency (IF) signal is obtained by mixing the chirp signal and the primary signal. The frequency of the midpoints can be estimated by the chirp-z transform (CZT), therefore the frequency of every piece can be calculated. This method avoids the impact that the quick change of frequency leads to the error of short-time Fourier transform. It also can reduce the error brought by the estimation of chirp rate. Therefore, the method can improve the accuracy of time-frequency analysis. This article also puts forward a method to search the order of fractional Fourier transform, and the computer simulation and measurement verifies the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. © 2015 SERSC.