Patent ID: 7908103

Claim:
A computer-implemented method of signal processing comprising: generating at least one masking signal based upon a computed Fourier transform of a signal received from a sensor or a transducer in response to the occurrence a a physical phenomena, the Fourier transform computed by applying a Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) to the received signal; determining at least one intrinsic mode function (IMF) of the received signal by performing a masking-signal-based empirical mode decomposition (EMD) using the at least one masking signal; and replacing the received signal with a corresponding residue signal generated during the performing of the masking signal-based EMD, wherein the residue signal exhibits the general trends of the received signal, wherein the generating step comprises calculating a magnitude and frequency of each mode in an FFT spectrum generated by applying the FFT to the received signal, determining whether a highest modal frequency is within an octave of that of another mode in the FFT spectrum, and if so, generating a masking signal having a frequency equal to the sum of the highest modal frequency and a next lower modal frequency.