Weak transient signal detection based on continuous wavelet and cumulant analysis

Based on the continuous wavelet transform and the 4th order cumulant analysis as well as a threshold derived from the Neyman-Pearson criterion, this paper presents a simple and effective algorithm for detection of weak transient signals severely contaminated by high level noise. The proposed method is shown to offer a significantly better detection probability, especially in poor signal-to-noise ratio scenarios, via comparison with other methods based on the continuous wavelet transform only and based on the short-time Fourier transform and the Wigner-Ville distribution with or without cumulant analysis.