A Dual-Input Dense U-Net-Based Method for Line Spectrum Purification Under Interference Background

Line spectrum purification is a fundamental task in underwater detection and identification tasks. A dual-input architecture based on Dense U-net is introduced to extract clean line spectra from strong interference. The U-net model features a symmetric encoder–decoder structure that accepts two-dimensional data as both input and output. The DenseBlock, a core component of DenseNets, offers greater parameter efficiency compared to conventional convolutional layers. In this paper, standard convolutional layers inside the original U-net are replaced by DenseBlocks. This model possesses two input channels, thus allowing the time–frequency feature of the interference and that of the interference–target mixture to be fed simultaneously. With supervised learning, the model is capable of eliminating the strong interference components and background noise from the superimposed spectrum, thereby producing a purified target line spectrum. Compared to traditional interference suppression methods, this approach offers higher feature accuracy and greater signal-to-interference-and-noise ratio (SINR) gain. Moreover, the model is trainable using simulation datasets and then deployed to real-world measurements, demonstrating strong generalization capabilities—a valuable property given the limited availability of labeled samples in underwater detection tasks. Being data-driven, this method operates without requiring prior assumptions about the array configuration, and consequently exhibits greater resilience to array imperfections relative to conventional model-based interference suppression techniques. Simulation and experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method achieves an output SINR improvement of more than 8 dB under low SINR conditions and exhibits significantly better robustness to array position errors than conventional methods, verifying its excellent line spectrum purification capability.