Time-frequency analysis of non-stationary harmonic sounds

An approach to the analysis of nonstationary harmonic sounds accompanied by other possibly nonstationary sounds is introduced. In this approach, one first computes the magnitude square of the short-time Fourier transform (MSQ-STFT) with exponential frequency sampling. A technique based on principal components analysis is then applied to the MSQ-STFT of the signal data. Under a broadly applicable set of conditions, this analysis produces a time-frequency distribution in which components of the interfering sounds are suppressed relative to the components of the harmonic sound of interest. Experimental results on real sounds and synthetic signals are presented to illustrate the practical success of this approach.<>