Reassignment Method - Introduction

Introduction

Many signals of interest have a distribution of energy that varies in time and frequency. For example, any sound signal having a beginning or an end has an energy distribution that varies in time, and most sounds exhibit considerable variation in both time and frequency over their duration. Time-frequency representations are commonly used to analyze or characterize such signals. They map the one-dimensional time-domain signal into a two-dimensional function of time and frequency. A time-frequency representation describes the variation of spectral energy distribution over time, much as a musical score describes the variation of musical pitch over time.

In audio signal analysis, the spectrogram is the most commonly used time-frequency representation, probably because it is well-understood, and immune to so-called "cross-terms" that sometimes make other time-frequency representations difficult to interpret. But the windowing operation required in spectrogram computation introduces an unsavory tradeoff between time resolution and frequency resolution, so spectrograms provide a time-frequency representation that is blurred in time, in frequency, or in both dimensions. The method of time-frequency reassignment is a technique for refocussing time-frequency data in a blurred representation like the spectrogram by mapping the data to time-frequency coordinates that are nearer to the true region of support of the analyzed signal.

Read more about this topic:  Reassignment Method

Famous quotes containing the word introduction:

    Do you suppose I could buy back my introduction to you?
    S.J. Perelman, U.S. screenwriter, Arthur Sheekman, Will Johnstone, and Norman Z. McLeod. Groucho Marx, Monkey Business, a wisecrack made to his fellow stowaway Chico Marx (1931)

    Such is oftenest the young man’s introduction to the forest, and the most original part of himself. He goes thither at first as a hunter and fisher, until at last, if he has the seeds of a better life in him, he distinguishes his proper objects, as a poet or naturalist it may be, and leaves the gun and fish-pole behind. The mass of men are still and always young in this respect.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    The role of the stepmother is the most difficult of all, because you can’t ever just be. You’re constantly being tested—by the children, the neighbors, your husband, the relatives, old friends who knew the children’s parents in their first marriage, and by yourself.
    —Anonymous Stepparent. Making It as a Stepparent, by Claire Berman, introduction (1980, repr. 1986)