Investigation and evaluation of cross-term reduction in masked Wigner-Ville distributions using S-transforms

Non-linear and non-stationary signals are analyzed and processed in the time-frequency (TF) domain due to interpretation simplicity. Wigner-Ville distribution (WVD) delivers a very sharp resolution of non-stationary signals in the TF domain. However, cross-terms occur between true frequency modes due to their bilinear nature. Masked WVD reduces cross-terms by multiplying the time-frequency representation (TFR) obtained from the WVD with the TFR of the same signal obtained from another method, while S-transform (ST) is a linear signal analysis method that combines the advantages of short-time Fourier transform (STFT) and wavelet transform (WT). This paper investigated WVD masking with both original and modified STs to compare their cross-term reduction results. Moreover, additional parameters are integrated into the ST to deliver the better resolution of the ST and, consequently, more satisfactory cross-term reduction. However, these parameters must be carefully optimized by expert users in their respective application fields.