Analysis of a direct separation method based on adaptive chirplet transform for signals with crossover instantaneous frequencies

In many applications, it is necessary to retrieve the sub-signal building blocks of a multi-component signal, which is usually non-stationary in real-world and real-life applications. Empirical mode decomposition (EMD), synchrosqueezing transform (SST), signal separation operation (SSO), and iterative filtering decomposition (IFD) have been proposed and developed for this purpose. However, these computational methods are restricted by the specification of well-separation of the sub-signal frequency curves for multi-component signals. On the other hand, the chirplet transform-based signal separation scheme (CT3S) that extends SSO from the two-dimensional “time-frequency” plane to the three-dimensional “time-frequency-chirp rate” space was recently proposed in our recent work to remove the frequency-separation specification, and thereby allowing “frequency crossing”. The main objective of this present paper is to carry out an in-depth error analysis study of instantaneous frequency estimation and component recovery of the CT3S method.