Technical note TF01-290409

Signal processing applied to vibration signals involves many techniques allowing the
investigation of the machine reality trough the signal representation. Among all representations, the
time waveform representation and spectral representation are the most popular.

Each one of these representations has its own advantages and disadvantages that we list in
the following table:

Representation Advantages Disadvantages

Respects events time
Quite Impossible to recognize
repartition = easy recognition
the events frequencies for
Time waveform of isolated events
signals containing more than
Relatively easy recognition of
one harmonic component
amplitude modulation
Frequency component
separation = localize easily the Ignores events time
Spectral
frequency range containing repartition
vibration energy

A simple reading of the above table shows that the disadvantages of each technique are
compensated by the advantages of other

Here comes the utility and the originality of the Time frequency representation, it combines
in fact the time waveform and the spectral representations and thus eliminates all the disadvantages.

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 Technical note TF01-290409

Challenge :
The challenge is a competition between time waveform, spactral, and Time Frequency
representations to recognize a combination of 4 numbers typed on a telephone keypad.

The frequency representation allows us to pinpoint the frequencies containing the energy of the
signal - recognize the used keys, while the time waveform representation gives us the time duration
of each event (0.2s).

The time-frequency spectrogram combines these two informations in the following table:

Event n 1 2 3 4
Duration 0-0,2 s 0,2-0,4 s 0,4-0,6 s 0,6-0,8 s
frequency 690 + 1200 850 + 1330 770 + 1470 690 + 1330
Used Keys 1 8 6 2

The spectrogram in this case is the only technique understanding the reality of the phenomenon,
thanks to him we know that the numbers are in order: 1 - 8 - 6 - 2 and that each key was pressed
during 0.2 s.

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 Technical note TF01-290409

Vibration case study

Original Signal measured on a bearing with an outer ring defect BPFO= 96.4Hz

Wavelet Recursive filters

Source : www.mathworks.com

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 Technical note TF01-290409

Results

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