The fixed window function used in the short‐time Fourier transform (STFT) does not guarantee both time and frequency resolution, exerting a negative impact on the subsequent study of time‐frequency analysis (TFA). To avoid these limitations, a post‐processing method that enhances the time‐frequency resolution using a deep‐learning (DL) framework is proposed. Initially, the deconvolution theoretical formula is derived and a post‐processing operation is performed on the time‐frequency representation (TFR) of the STFT via deconvolution, a theoretical calculation to obtain the ideal time‐frequency representation (ITFR). Then, aiming at the adverse influence of the window function, a novel fully‐convolutional encoder‐decoder network is trained to preserve effective features and acquire the optimal time‐frequency kernel. In essence, the generation of the optimal time‐frequency kernel can be regarded as a deconvolution process. The authors conducted the qualitative and quantitative analyses of numerical simulations, with experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method achieves satisfactory TFR, possesses strong anti‐noise capabilities, and exhibits high steady‐state generalisation capability. Furthermore, results of a comparative experiment with several TFA methods indicate that the proposed method yields significantly improved performance in terms of time‐frequency resolution, energy concentration, and computational load.

Due to the complex ocean propagation environments, the underwater acoustic (UWA) multipath channel often exhibits block sparse time-varying features, and while dynamic compressed sensing (DCS) can mitigate the time-varying effects of the UWA channel, DCS-based algorithms have limited performance for the UWA channel with block sparsity. In this study, by formulating the UWA channel with blocks concatenation, a block sparse-based DCS approach (BS-CS) is proposed to explore the block and time-varying sparsity of UWA channel simultaneously. In detail, we firstly adopt a block sparse recovery algorithm, block orthogonal matching pursuit (BOMP), to compute the temporary estimate. Then, the CS approach is applied to compute the support additions, which are caused by the time-varying components of the UWA channel. Next, we use the selected support to perform the BOMP estimate, and obtain the estimated channel response. Finally, the numerical simulation and the sea experiment were carried out to verify the superior performance of the proposed BS-CS algorithm in the block sparse time-varying UWA channels.