Evolutionary Spectra and Non-Stationary Processes

Summary We develop an approach to the spectral analysis of non-stationary processes which is based on the concept of “evolutionary spectra”; that is, spectral functions which are time dependent, and have a physical interpretation as local energy distributions over frequency. It is shown that the notion of evolutionary spectra generalizes the usual definition of spectra for stationary processes, and that, under certain conditions, the evolutionary spectrum at each instant of time may be estimated from a single realization of a process. By such means it is possible to study processes with continuously changing “spectral patterns”.