Windowing Design and Performance Assessment for Mitigation of Spectrum Leakage

Abstract

This paper investigates the windowing design and performance assessment for mitigation of spectral leakage. A pretreatment method to reduce the spectral leakage is developed. In addition to selecting appropriate window functions, the Welch method is introduced. Windowing is implemented by multiplying the input signal with a windowing function. The periodogram technique based on Welch method is capable of providing good resolution if data length samples are selected optimally. Windowing amplitude modulates the input signal so that the spectral leakage is evened out. Thus, windowing reduces the amplitude of the samples at the beginning and end of the window, altering leakage. The influence of various window functions on the Fourier transform spectrum of the signals was discussed, and the characteristics and functions of various window functions were explained. In addition, we compared the differences in the influence of different data lengths on spectral resolution and noise levels caused by the traditional power spectrum estimation and various window-function-based Welch power spectrum estimations.