A proper time-frequency transform technique suppresses the blurring and smearing effect of the time-varying Doppler shift on the target image. The conventional target imaging method uses the Fourier transform for extracting the Doppler shift from the received radar pulse. Since the Doppler shift is timevarying for rotating targets, the constructed images will be degraded. In this thesis, the Doppler shift information required for the Range-Doppler image of the target is extracted by using high resolution time-frequency transform techniques. The Wigner-Ville Distribution and the Adaptive Gabor Representation with the Coarse-to-Fine and the Matching Pursuit Search Algorithms are examined techniques for the target imaging system. The modified Matching Pursuit Algorithm, the Matching Pursuit with Reduced Dictionary is proposed which decreases the signal processing time required by the Adaptive Gabor Representation. The Hybrid Matching Pursuit Search Algorithm is also introduced in this thesis work and the Coarse-to-Fine Algorithm and the Matching Pursuit Algorithm are combined for obtaining better representation quality of a signal in the time-frequency domain. The stated techniques are applied on to the sample signals and compared with each other. The application of these techniques in the target imaging system is also performed for the simulated aircrafts.

Signals recorded from the brain often show rhythmic patterns at different frequencies, which are tightly coupled to the external stimuli as well as the internal state of the subject. These signals also have transient structures related to spiking or sudden onset of a stimulus, which have a duration not exceeding tens of milliseconds. Further, brain signals are highly non-stationary because both behavioral state and external stimuli can change over a short time scale. It is therefore essential to study brain signals using techniques that can represent both rhythmic and transient components of the signal. In Chapter 2, we describe a multi-scale decomposition technique based on an over-complete dictionary called matching pursuit (MP), and show that it is able to capture both sharp stimulus-onset transient and sustained gamma rhythm in local field potential recorded from the primary visual cortex. Gamma rhythm (30 to 80 Hz), often associated with high-level cortical functions, has been proposed to provide a temporal reference frame (“clock”) for spiking activity, for which it should have least center frequency variation and consistent phase for extended durations. However, recent studies have proposed that gamma occurs in short bursts and it cannot act as a reference. In Chapter 3, we propose another gamma duration estimator based on matching pursuit (MP) algorithm, which is tested with synthetic brain signals and found to be estimating the gamma duration efficiently. Applying this algorithm to real data from awake monkeys, we show that the median gamma duration is more than 330 ms, which could be long enough to support some cortical computations.