Wavelet Analysis: Mother Wavelet Selection Methods

Wavelet analysis, being a popular time-frequency analysis method has been applied in various fields to analyze a wide range of signals covering biological signals, vibration signals, acoustic and ultrasonic signals, to name a few. With the capability to provide both time and frequency domains information, wavelet analysis is mainly for time-frequency analysis of signals, signal compression, signal denoising, singularity analysis and features extraction. The main challenge in using wavelet transform is to select the most optimum mother wavelet for the given tasks, as different mother wavelet applied on to the same signal may produces different results. This paper reviews on the mother wavelet selection methods with particular emphasis on the quantitative approaches. A brief description of the proposed new technique to determine the optimum mother wavelet specifically for machinery faults diagnosis is also presented in this paper.