System for detection and estimation of periodic patterns in a noisy signal

A method for discerning periodicities in signals, comprising the steps of:

• sampling a signal of interest using a sampling device;
• pre-processing said sampled signal using an analog pre-processor;
• obtaining short-term spectra of said signal at equally spaced in slices of time;
• constructing an autocorrelation matrix between said short term spectra;
• and
• associating each secondary diagonal of said matrix with a time lag,
• wherein said obtaining, constructing, and associating are executed by computerized processors.

An apparatus for estimating periodicities in a signal, comprising:

• an analog preprocessor that processes a sampled signal in discrete succession of equally spaced slices of time, using a band-pass filter on a wide-band signal;
• and
• one or more processors that
• generate short-term characteristics vectors for such slice of time,
• group the short term characteristics vectors into set;
• obtain at least one representative vector for each of said sets of short-term characteristics vectors, and
• estimating of periodic structures using said representative vectors.