Maximum spectrum of continuous wavelet transform and its application in resolving an overlapped signal.

To estimate the number of peaks and to find the individual peak positions in an overlapped signal, a new method called maximum spectrum of continuous wavelet transform (MSCWT) was developed by extracting the maximum coefficients of continuous wavelet transform (CWT). The peak position in MSCWT was the same as that in its original signal. In this process, CWT was performed not on a single dilation but on an appreciation dilation range. To obtain such a range, a new criterion was introduced to choose a center dilation, which was used to form the dilation range. If Cdilation denoted the center dilation, the proper dilation range was [Cdilation -6 +/- 2, Cdilation +1 +/- 1]. The Mexican Hat function was an analytical wavelet. Utilizing the information of the peak number and the position detected by MSCWT, a fitting route was performed to recover the original signal. One simulated and four true overlapped signals, including high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), ultraviolet-visible (UV) spectrum, and differential pulse voltammetric (DPV), were processed, and the results indicated that MSCWT could detect an overlapped peak number and position, and the curve fitting based on information of MSCWT had a higher accuracy. The proposed method was an efficient one in resolving different types of overlapped signals.