Effective Separation Method for Single-Channel Time-Frequency Overlapped Signals Based on Improved Empirical Wavelet Transform

To improve the separation performance of time-frequency overlapped radar and communication signals from a single channel, this paper proposes an effective separation method based on an improved empirical wavelet transform (EWT) that introduces a fast boundary detection mechanism. The fast boundary detection mechanism can be regarded as a process of searching, difference optimization, and continuity detection of the important local minima in the Fourier spectrum that enables determination of the sub-band boundary and thus allows multiple signal components to be distinguished. An orthogonal empirical wavelet filter bank that was designed for signal adaptive reconstruction is then used to separate the input time-frequency overlapped signals. The experimental results show that if two source components are completely overlapped within the time domain and the spectrum overlap ratio is less than 60%, the average separation performance is improved by approximately 32.3% when compared with the classic EWT; the proposed method also improves the suitability for multiple frequency shift keying (MFSK) and reduces the algorithm complexity.