A continuous wavelet transform approach for harmonic parameters estimation in the presence of impulsive noise

Impulsive noise caused by some random events has the main character of short rise-time and wide frequency spectrum range, so it has the potential to degrade the performance and reliability of the harmonic estimation. This paper focuses on the harmonic estimation procedure based on continuous wavelet transform (CWT) when the analyzed signal is corrupted by the impulsive noise. The digital CWT of both the time-varying sinusoidal signal and the impulsive noise are analyzed, and there are two cross ridges in the time-frequency plane of CWT, which are generated by the signal and the noise separately. In consideration of the amplitude of the noise and the number of the spike event, two inequalities are derived to provide limitations on the wavelet parameters. Based on the amplitude distribution of the noise, the optimal wavelet parameters determined by solving these inequalities are used to suppress the contamination of the noise, as well as increase the amplitude of the ridge corresponding to the signal, so the parameters of each harmonic component can be estimated accurately. The proposed procedure is applied to a numerical simulation and a bone vibration signal test giving satisfactory results of stationary and time-varying harmonic parameter estimation.