Uncertainty quantification of synchrosqueezing transform under complicated nonstationary noise

We propose a bootstrapping framework to quantify uncertainty in time-frequency representations (TFRs) generated by the short-time Fourier transform (STFT) and the STFT-based synchrosqueezing transform (SST) for oscillatory signals with time-varying amplitude and frequency contaminated by complex nonstationary noise. To this end, we leverage a recent high-dimensional Gaussian approximation technique to establish a sequential Gaussian approximation for nonstationary processes under mild assumptions. This result is of independent interest and provides a theoretical basis for characterizing the approximate Gaussianity of STFT-induced TFRs as random fields. Building on this foundation, we establish the robustness of SST-based signal decomposition in the presence of nonstationary noise. Furthermore, assuming locally stationary noise, we develop a Gaussian autoregressive bootstrap for uncertainty quantification of SST-based TFRs and provide theoretical justification. We validate the proposed methods with simulations and illustrate their practical utility by analyzing spindle activity in electroencephalogram recordings. Our work bridges time-frequency analysis in signal processing and nonlinear spectral analysis of time series in statistics.