Antarctic Blue Whale Calls Detection Based on an Improved Version of the Stochastic Matched Filter

Abstract

As a first step to Antarctic Blue Whale monitoring, a new method based on a passive application of the Stochastic Matched Filter (SMF) is developed. To perform Z-call detection in noisy environment, improvements on the classical SMF requirements are proposed. The signal’s reference is adjusted, the background noise estimation is reevaluated to avoid operator’s selection, and the time-dependent Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) estimation is revised by time-frequency analysis. To highlight the SMF’s robustness against noise, it is applied on a Ocean Bottom Seismometers hydrophone-recorded data and compared to the classical Matched Filter: the output’s SNR is maximized and the false alarm drastically decreased.