A test statistic for sequential identification of co-channel digital signals using a deflation approach

When sequentially separating a linear combination of co-channel digital signals, it is necessary at each step to test the validity of the currently estimated signal prior to proceeding to extract the next one. We describe a procedure for use with sequential algorithms which uses a deflation-based approach combined with a simple test statistic. The deflation step removes the contributions of the currently identified signals. The simple test statistic takes into account the error terms introduced into the data by the deflation. The method has been successfully applied in an existing sequential estimation algorithms.