Non-stationary physiological noise poses significant difficulties due to its time-varying and previously unknown characteristics. When processing electronystagmographic signals, linear filtering can distort diagnostically significant rapid changes caused by saccadic eye movements. In such cases, nonlinear filters based on robust estimators are more appropriate, whereas linear filtering effectively reduces white noise in parts of a signal with linear behaviour. Therefore, an adaptive signal processing approach that varies in nonlinearity from highly nonlinear robust estimation to linear averaging and combines their benefits appears promising. We have proposed a low-complexity adaptive method for switching filter sets and relevant filter parameter settings based on the estimated noise level and local signal behaviour. This method does not require time for filter parameter modification and does not need prior information on the signal model and noise variance. Based on this method, we have designed adaptive nonlinear filtering algorithms to exploit the advantages of both the nonlinear robust and linear averaging estimators. We have evaluated the filtering quality statistically using the minimum mean square error criteria and the maximum signal-to-noise ratio for a model signal with different levels of additive Gaussian noise. The proposed real-time adaptive filtering algorithms demonstrate a significant efficiency improvement compared to the commonly used filters. The proposed adaptive myriad algorithm achieves the highest efficiency by adjusting a sample myriad linearity parameter depending on the local estimate of a signal scale and changing the sliding window length and the coefficient affecting the linearity parameter.
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