Filtering real signals through frequency modulation and peak detection in the time-frequency plane

A novel technique for filtering a real signal is presented. The method is based upon encoding the signal as an instantaneous frequency (IF) and using IF analysis techniques to recover a filtered version of it. A general iterative time-frequency peak filtering (TFPF) scheme based on this method is formulated. Simulations are given which show extremely clean recovery of signals in noise levels down to -9 dB. Applications to estimating the polynomial phase coefficients of nonstationary signals and differentiating noisy signals are presented