Automatic Time-Frequency Analysis of Echolocation Signals Using the Matched Gaussian Multitaper Spectrogram

High-resolution time-frequency (TF) images of multicomponent signals are of great interest for visualization, feature extraction and estimation. The matched Gaussian multitaper spectrogram has been proposed to optimally resolve multicomponent transient functions of Gaussian shape. Hermite functions are used as multitapers and the weights of the different spectrogram functions are optimized. For a fixed number of multitapers, the optimization gives the approximate Wigner distribution of the Gaussian shaped function. Increasing the number of multitapers gives a better approximation, i.e. a better resolution, but the cross-terms also become more prominent for close TF components. In this submission, we evaluate a number of different concentration measures to automatically estimate the number of multitapers resulting in the optimal spectrogram for TF images of dolphin echolocation signals. The measures are evaluated for different multi-component signals and noise levels and a suggestion of an automatic procedure for optimal TF analysis is given. The results are compared to other well known TF estimation algorithms and examples of real data measurements of echolocation signals from a beluga whale (Delphinapterus leucas) are presented.