Transient signal detection using higher order moments

The asymptotic performance of transient detection based on higher order moments is theoretically derived, invoking the asymptotic normality of the decision statistics, and a detector based on the third-order absolute moment is proposed. The analysis shows that for a transient duration of less than half the observation window, the proposed detector outperforms the detectors based on the second- and fourth-order moments for a wide range of SNR values. Computer simulations assess the applicability of the theoretical analysis.