Time domain amplitude and frequency detection of gravitational waves from coalescing binaries

We propose a multistep procedure for the on-line detection and analysis of the gravitational wave signals emitted during the coalescence of compact binaries. This procedure, based on a hierarchical strategy, consists of a rough on-line analysis of the gravitational wave signal using adaptive line enhancers filters and a fast off-line parameter estimate, using the controlled random search optimization algorithm. A more refined off-line analysis using the classic matched-filtering technique, with a greatly reduced computational burden, can follow to further improve the parameter estimate. The results of simulations for the rough analysis are quite promising both for the relatively small computational power needed and for the robustness of the algorithms used, so that it could be very helpful for gravitational wave detection with very large baseline interferometric detectors such as LIGO and VIRGO.