Nonorthogonal Joint Diagonalization/Zero Diagonalization for Source Separation Based on Time-Frequency Distributions

This paper deals with the blind separation of instantaneous mixtures of source signals using time-frequency distributions (TFDs). We propose iterative algorithms to perform the nonorthogonal zero diagonalization and/or joint diagonalization of given sets of matrices. As an application, we show that the source separation can be realized by applying one of these algorithms to a set of spatial quadratic TFD matrices corresponding only to the so-called cross-source terms and/or to the so-called autosource terms. The determination of the above matrices to be jointly decomposed requires first an automatic selection procedure of useful time-frequency points. Regarding this last point, we also propose a new selection procedure and a modification of an existing one and provide a comparison with other existing ones. The nonorthogonal joint diagonalization and/or zero diagonalization algorithm's main advantage is to not require (in the blind source separation context) a prewhitening stage, which allows them to work even with a class of correlated signals and provides generally improved separation performance. Finally, an analytical example and computer simulations are provided in order to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach and to compare it with classical ones.