Detection of abrupt changes: A time-frequency approach

This paper presents a comparison between parametric and non-parametric approaches of abrupt changes detection in noisy signals. The goal is to propose an alternative way to be used when the model-based methods do not work very well because of an unsuitable model structure or a non strictly stationnary stepwise signal. In this latter case, an analysis of time-frequency distributions allows the detection of abrupt spectral changes without any hypothesis and provides some results as good as parametric methods for the studied type of signals.