Bertrand's Representation of the Optimal Detector

Abstract: It is shown how the optimal detector of Gaussian signals can be represented in terms of Bertrand's class of time-frequency distributions. In this representation, the detector is a correlation between the corresponding time-frequency distributions. Since Bertrand's class is related to the power-law chirp signals, the new representation can be useful for their detection. The new approach is shown to be more effective then other time-frequency methods for the case of phase-insensitive detection. The finding provides a complementary representation to Cohen's class representation in the time-frequency domain already known in the literature.