Unlocking Signal Processing With Image Detection: A Frequency Hopping Detection Scheme for Complex EMI Environments Using STFT and CenterNet

Accurate detection and parameter estimation of frequency hopping (FH) signals remain challenging in FH signal-based transmission systems. This study proposes a scheme combining time-frequency analysis (TFA) and deep learning (DL)-based image processing algorithms to alleviate the degradation of detection accuracy and estimation performance caused by complex electromagnetic interference (EMI). A short-time Fourier transform (STFT) was used to obtain the signal spectrogram, which reflects the signal energy in a concentration-dependent manner. Then, a CenterNet-based deep network was employed to identify each FH hop’s shape and position, reducing the computational burden via a lightweight neural network while maintaining high recognition accuracy. Inverse mapping from the coordinates to the spectrogram was used to perform parameter estimation in the time-frequency (TF) domain. The estimation error was reduced by precisely locating the centroid of the signal energy using CenterNet. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme can accurately estimate the FH signal at a low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) with complex EMI. Furthermore, appropriately determining the optimal parameters of CenterNet to ensure the estimator performance provides a novel approach for integrating DL into signal detection and estimation in complex EMI environments.