Instantaneous frequency estimation of nonlinear frequency-modulated signals in the presence of multiplicative and additive noise

This paper addresses the problem of estimating the instantaneous frequency (IF) of monocomponent nonlinear, not necessarily polynomial, frequency modulated (FM) signals affected by stationary multiplicative and additive noise. Both noise processes are assumed to be complex circular Gaussian and independent. The peak of the polynomial Wigner-Ville distribution (PWVD) is proposed here as an IF estimator. We derive analytical expressions for the bias and asymptotic variance of the estimator and propose an algorithm to select the optimal window length to resolve the bias-variance tradeoff in the IF estimation. Simulation results are presented to confirm the theoretical results.