SNR analysis of time-frequency distributions

The SNR analysis has been widely used to evaluate the performance of time-frequency (t-f) distributions. Often the SNR is defined at a specific t-f location or using the averaged variance over the entire t-f domain. In this paper, a new SNR measure is provided based on averaging along the signal t-f signature and its properties for linear FM signals are delineated. It is shown that the SNR increases for increased integration range, and is not highly sensitive to the FM sweeping rate.