Detection of the local maxima in time-frequency and time-scale representations

There is always a trade-off between time and frequency resolutions and crossterms in the transform space even for time-frequency or time-scale representations in signal processing techniques. These problems may strongly affect the detection and recognition of local characteristics of signals. In particular, they become more severe in the case of signals contaminated by noise, and in multiple component signals. An algorithm is presented to extract the local modulus maxima of energy distributions for both time-frequency and time-scale representations. The results show clearly the local features of the investigated signal embedded in noise