Distributed data classification in underwater acoustic sensors based on local time-frequency coherence analysis

This paper introduces a stochastic approach that considers the distributed classification problem for a network of underwater acoustic sensors. The proposed classifier applies the third order polynomial regression to the instantaneous frequency extracted from time-frequency representation of different classes of signals and represent the polynomial's coefficients in a three- dimensional representation space. This automatic classifier is then compared to a non-parametric classifier based on the training of a standard neural network. The results of the proposed method on real data illustrate the efficiency of this algorithm, in terms of signal's characterization and lower communication bit rates between each sensor and the data center.