Method for IF estimation of multicomponent FM signals

Aiming at the key problem on the phase structure analysis for multicomponent FM signals, an IF(Instantaneous Frequency) estimation method based on the Viterbi algorithm is proposed. Inspired by the idea of track association in multi-target tracking, combining IF trajectory tracking with multi-target tracking, a new membership penalty function is introduced to broaden adaptability and the proposed method performs better than the original VA which is only applicable to single-component signals. Furthermore, a new TF(Time-Frequency) cross-point processing method is proposed to improve the estimation accuracy of multicomponent signals. According to simulation results, the proposed method can obtain accurate IF information on multicomponent signals with a complex phase structure. Compared to the existing algorithms, it is shown that the proposed algorithm based on the VA improves effectively the applicability and robustness for IF estimation of multicomponent signals.