For a nondecreasing distortion characteristic

and a given signal

, the "cross correlation" function defined by
![R_{\\phi} (\\tau ) triang\\leq \\int_{-\\infty }^{\\infty } \\phi[x(t)]x(t - \\tau ) dt](/images/tex/5257.gif)
is shown to satisfy the inequality

, for all

, generalizing an earlier result of Richardson that required

to be continuous and strictly increasing. The methods of the paper also show that, under weak conditions, begin{equation} R_{phi,psi}(tau) triangleq int_{-infty}^{infty} phi[x(t)]psi[x(t - tau)] dt leq R_{phi,psi}(0) end{equation} when

is strictly increasing and

is nondecreasing. In the case of hounded signals (e.g., periodic functions), the appropriate cross correlation function is begin{equation} mathcal{R}_{phi,psi}(tau} triangleq lim_{T rightarrow infty} (2T)^{-l} int_{-T}^T phi[x(t)]psi[x(t - tau)] dt. end{equation} For this case it is shown that

for any nondecreasing (or nonincreasing) distortion functions

and

. The result is then applied to generalize an inequality on correlation functions for periodic signals due to Prosser. Noise signals are treated and inequalities of a similar nature are obtained for ensemble-average cross correlation functions under suitable hypotheses on the statistical properties of the noise. Inequalities of this type are the basis of a well-known method of estimating the unknown time delay of an observed signal. The extension to nondecreasing discontinuous distortion functions allows the use of hard limiting or quantization to facilitate the cross correlation calculation.