A four-parameter atomic decomposition of chirplets

A new four-parameter atomic decomposition of chirplets is developed for compact and precise representation of signals with chirp components. The four-parameter chirplet atom is obtained from the unit Gaussian function by successive applications of scaling, fractional Fourier transform (FRFT), and time-shift and frequency-shift operators. The application of the FRFT operator results in a rotation of the Wigner distribution of the Gaussian in the time-frequency plane by a specified angle. The decomposition is realized by using the matching pursuit algorithm. For this purpose, the four-parameter space is discretized to obtain a small but complete subset in the Hilbert space. A time-frequency distribution (TFD) is developed for clear and readable visualization of the signal components. It is observed that the chirplet decomposition and the related TFD provide more compact and precise representation of signal inner structures compared with the commonly used time-frequency representations.