Linear and synchrosqueezed time-frequency representations revisited. Part I: Overview, standards of use, related issues and algorithms

Abstract: Time-frequency representations (TFRs) of signals, such as the windowed Fourier transform (WFT), wavelet transform (WT) and their synchrosqueezed variants (SWFT, SWT), provide powerful analysis tools. However, there are many important issues related to the practical use of TFRs that need to be clarified. Here we present a thorough review of these TFRs, summarizing all theoretical, practical and numerical aspects of their use, reconsidering some conventions and introducing new concepts and procedures. The purposes of this work are: (i) to provide a consistent overview of the computation, properties, and use of the (S)WFT/(S)WT methods; (ii) to establish general standards related to their use, both theoretical and practical; and (iii) to provide clean and optimized algorithms and MatLab codes, appropriate for any window or wavelet.