Objective detection and time-frequency localization of components within transient signals

An automatic component detection method for overlapping transient pulses in multi-component signals is presented and evaluated. The recently proposed scaled reassignment technique is shown to have the best achievable resolution for closely located Gaussian shaped transient pulses, even in heavy disruptive noise. As a result, the method automatically detects and counts the number of transients, giving the center times and center frequencies of all components with considerable accuracy. The presented method shows great potential for applications in several acoustic research fields, where coinciding Gaussian shaped transients are analyzed. The performance is tested on measured data from a laboratory pulse-echo setup and from a dolphin echolocation signal measured simultaneously at two different locations in the echolocation beam. Since the method requires little user input, it should be easily employed in a variety of research projects.