Spectral analysis of bi-tone waveforms: study of the uncertainty contributions arising from the virtual time-domain approach

Abstract

Multi-tone signals are discrete-spectrum signals with spectral components located at nonharmonically related frequencies. The authors proposed a method that combines the use of a virtual time-domain and a statistical technique that provides an estimator for the spectral analysis of multi-tone signals in short observation intervals. In this paper, the above estimator is treated as error source, whose effects are referred to as “intrinsic contributions” to uncertainty. A study on these contributions is developed in the case of bi-tone signals and application examples are provided. The experimental results confirm theory.