Blind separation of rotating machine signals using penalized mutual information criterion and minimal distortion principle

The Blind Separation problem of convolutive mixtures is addressed in this paper. We have developed a new algorithm based on a penalized mutual information criterion recently introduced in [El Rhabi et al., A penalized mutual information criterion for blind separation of convolutive mixtures, Signal Processing 84 (2004) 1979-1984] and which also allows to choose an optimal separator among an infinite number of valid separators that can extract the source signals in a certain sense according to the Minimal Distortion Principle. So, the minimisation of this criterion is easily done using a direct gradient approach without constraint on the displacements. Thus, our approach allows to restore directly the contribution of the sources to the sensor signals without post-processing as it is usually done. Finally, we illustrate the performances of our algorithm through simulations and on real rotating machine vibration signals. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.