JFET_V4_N3_RP4 A.K. Mittra N.K. Choudhari Journal on Future Engineering and Technology 2230 – 7184 4 3 30 36 Fetal Phonocardiography, Fetal Monitoring, Spectral Estimation, Signal Processing The fetal heart sound serves as an effective diagnostic tool for a large class of fetal stress provocation. When the fetal heart sound is recorded and displayed graphically, the technique is known as fetal phonocardiography (fPCG). The fPCG signals, exhibit innate rhythms and periodicity that is more readily be appreciated in terms of frequency than time unit. This need arises to consider the fPCG signals, not only in terms of time but also in terms of frequency domain. The main advantage over the time domain representation is that, it allows a clear visualization of the signal frequency content and in many cases help to understand underplaying physiological phenomena. This work investigates methods to estimate frequency domain characteristics of fPCG signals. In this paper, various digital signal processing techniques are applied; compared and finally most appropriate technique is used for the spectrum inference of the fetal heart sound signal. February - April 2009 Copyright © 2009 i-manager publications. All rights reserved. i-manager Publications http://www.imanagerpublications.com/Article.aspx?ArticleId=277