High-resolution spectral analysis using multiple-interval adaptive prediction

The problem of adaptively detecting two sinusoids corrupted by noise is considered, with emphasis on resolution properties. The approach is to form a spectral estimate from the coefficients of a Δ-step-ahead adaptive predictor. A theoretical analysis reveals that attention to the choice of the prediction horizon Δ gives a distinct improvement in the spectral estimate and in the resolution of the signals. The theoretical results are illustrated with numerical examples. Comparisons with previously suggested techniques are also made.