Degrees of cyclostationarity and their application to signal detection and estimation

Abstract The problem of defining an appropriate measure of the degree of nonstationarity for stochastic processes that exhibit cyclostationarity is addressed. After discussing several candidate measures of degree of nonstationarity, one particularly promising measure is adopted. By decomposing this measure, several component measures are arrived at. Bounds on these measures are derived and their utility in applications involving signal detection and estimation is established. Examples are presented to illustrate the calculation of degrees of nonstationarity for several types of cyclostationary signals.