| Summary: | Frequency modulated signals appear in many applied disciplines, including geology, communication, biology and acoustics. They are naturally multicomponent, i.e., they consist of multiple waveforms, with specific time-dependent frequency (instantaneous frequency). In most practical applications, the number of modes—which is unknown—is needed for correctly analyzing a signal; for instance for separating each individual component and for estimating its instantaneous frequency. Detecting the number of components is a challenging problem, especially in the case of interfering modes. The Rényi Entropy-based approach has proven to be suitable for signal modes counting, but it is limited to well separated components. This paper addresses this issue by introducing a new notion of signal complexity. Specifically, the spectrogram of a multicomponent signal is seen as a non-stationary process where interference alternates with non-interference. Complexity concerning the transition between consecutive spectrogram sections is evaluated by means of a modified Run Length Encoding. Based on a spectrogram time-frequency evolution law, complexity variations are studied for accurately estimating the number of components. The presented method is suitable for multicomponent signals with non-separable modes, as well as time-varying amplitudes, showing robustness to noise.
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