Power-Law Processor Over Segmentation for Variable Length Transients Detection

In this letter, we aim to apply Nuttall's power-law processor, for which available data are raised to a power prior to summation, to the detection of variable length transient signals. The available data are often couched in frequency domain, where aggregation of transient signal energy into relatively small number of frequency bins is achieved by matching the DFT size with the transient length. However, without prior knowledge of the transient duration, performance degrades due to mismatch and the spread of transient energy over frequency bins as a result. A simple segmentation scheme is proposed to deal with the mismatch problem by exploiting robustness of power-law processor and contiguity of transients in time domain. Performance of the proposed segmentation scheme is evaluated, and is compared with two time domain detectors with and without the prior knowledge of transient length.