Patent ID: 8867862

Claim:
A method of selecting a transform length for use on a digital processing system comprising the steps of: receiving digital data related to a periodic physical signal as a plurality of samples taken over time; selecting a maximum, linear transform having an overlap factor D that is at least three and a size N I that is divisible by D; selecting a summarizing statistic based on user criteria concerning transform length such that the summarizing statistic is independent of window size N i under a noise-only hypothesis; determining a family of Hanning windowing functions of lengths N 0 , N 1 , . . . N I , the length of each windowing function being identified as N i , each windowing function shifted by K=N i /D samples and overlapped by N i −N i /D samples; conducting a set of analyses of the input signal utilizing each member N i of the determined family of Hanning windowing functions, each analysis providing a windowed signal at the window length N i ; calculating the linear transform in accordance with the selected linear transform of length N i each windowed signal N i , said calculated transform having a plurality of bins, each bin representing the amplitude of the windowed signal according to a particular basis function of the selected linear transform; scaling the bins from the calculated transform of each windowed signal to make the bins independent of window size N i ; computing the summarizing statistic from the scaled bins of each windowing function window size N i in a way that is independent of the window size N i under a noise-only hypothesis; comparing said summarizing statistics of each windowing function window size N i to determine the transform size N i that is closest to said user criteria concerning transfer length; and utilizing the determined transform size N i in analysis of said received digital data.