Estimation of Instantaneous Frequency Parameters of the Operator-Based Signal Separation Method

The main function of the operator-based signal separation approach is to construct an operator from a signal and use it to decompose the signal into two subcomponents. The procedure involves two steps: estimating the operator, and decomposing the signal into two subcomponents. Existing approaches estimate the operator’s parameters from the local extrema of a signal. In contrast, we show that the parameters can be estimated by adopting a variational approach. Because the proposed approach imposes a global constraint on the operator’s parameter, the estimated parameters are more robust than those derived from the local extrema of the signal. We also compare the signal separation results with those obtained by using the empirical mode decomposition (EMD) method.