Classification of cyclical time series using complex demodulation

A new and innovative procedure based on time varying amplitudes for the classification of cyclical time series is proposed. In many practical situations, the amplitude of a cyclical component of a time series is not constant. Estimated time varying amplitudes obtained through complex demodulation of the time series are used as the discriminating variables in classical discriminant analysis. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate through simulation studies and applications to well-known data sets, that time varying amplitudes have very good discriminating power and hence their use in classical discriminant analysis is a simple alternative to more complex methods of time series discrimination.