Aircraft flight parameter estimation based on passive acoustic techniques using the polynomial Wigner–Ville distribution

The acoustic signal from an overflying aircraft, as heard by a stationary observer, is used to estimate an aircraft’s constant height, ground speed, range, and acoustic frequency. Central to the success of this flight parameter estimation scheme is the need for an accurate estimate of the instantaneous frequency of the observed acoustic signal. In this paper, the polynomial Wigner–Ville distribution is used in this application as the instantaneous frequency estimator. Its performance and the issue of the optimal time domain window length are addressed.