Viterbi algorithm for chirp-rate and instantaneous frequency estimation

An instance of the Viterbi algorithm has been applied to the cubic phase function and chirp-rate estimation. The proposed algorithm has shown excellent performance for high noise environment. The obtained chirp-rate estimate is used in the instantaneous frequency estimation. The proposed instantaneous frequency estimator gives superior performance with respect to the state-of-the-art techniques for signals with non-linear instantaneous frequency.