A Precise Frequency Recognition Method of Short-Time SSVEP Signals Based on Signal Extension

Objective: Improving the Information Transfer Rate (ITR) is a popular research topic in steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP)-based brain-computer interfaces (BCIs). The higher recognition accuracy of short-time SSVEP signal is critical to improving ITR and achieving high-speed SSVEP-BCIs. However, the existing algorithms have unsatisfactory performance on recognizing short-time SSVEP signals, especially for calibration-free methods. Method: This study for the first time proposed improving the recognition accuracy of short-time SSVEP signals based on the calibration-free method by extending the SSVEP signal length. A signal extension model based on Multi-channel adaptive Fourier decomposition with different Phase (DP-MAFD) is proposed to achieve signal extension. Then the Canonical Correlation Analysis based on signal extension (SE-CCA) is proposed to complete the recognition and classification of SSVEP signals after extension. Result: The similarity study and SNR comparison analysis on public SSVEP datasets demonstrate that the proposed signal extension model has the ability to extend SSVEP signals. The classification results show that the proposed method outperforms Canonical Correlation Analysis (CCA) and Filter Bank Canonical Correlation Analysis (FBCCA) significantly in the measure of classification accuracy and information transmission rate (ITR), especially for short-time signals. The highest ITR of SE-CCA is improved to 175.61 bits/min at around 1s, while CCA is 100.55 bits/min at 1.75s and FBCCA is 141.76 bits/min at 1.25s. Conclusion: The signal extension method can improve the recognition accuracy of short-time SSVEP signals and further improve the ITR of SSVEP-BCIs.