Exploitation of spectral redundancy in cyclostationary signals

Abstract

It is shown that the cyclostationarity attribute, as it is reflected in the periodicities of (second-order) moments of the signal, can be interpreted in terms of the property that allows generation of spectral lines from the signal by putting it through a (quadratic) nonlinear transformation. The fundamental link between the spectral-line generation property and the statistical property called spectral correlation, which corresponds to the correlation that exists between the random fluctuations of components of the signal residing in distinct spectral bands, is explained. The effects on the spectral-correlation characteristics of some basic signal processing operations, such as filtering, product modulation, and time sampling, are examined. It is shown how to use these results to derive the spectral-correlation characteristics for various types of man-made signals. Some ways of exploiting the inherent spectral redundancy associated with spectral correlation to perform various signal processing tasks involving detection and estimation of highly corrupted man-made signals are described.