A Technique for Coherent Detection and Relating of Spectral Signals.

An important class of spectral signals is that for which the components within a signal set are characterized by complex emvelopes which exhibit correlation. A technique is proposed for extraction of such a signal set based on an orthogonal decomposition of the cross discrete frequency correlation matrix describing the set in the presence of additive uncorrelated noise. Certain advantages of the technique relative to those based of Fourier analysis with either smoothed estimated power spectrum or minimum variance processing are presented. Specifically, it is illustrated how the detection performance of the technique is established by the total energy in the spectral set rather than by the levels of individual spectral elements in the set. Furthermore, it is shown how minimum variance spectrum analysis actually can suppress components in such a set. Finally, simulated examples are presented which illustrate the performance of the technique. Author