  A novel approach towards the spectral analysis of stationary random bivariate
signals is proposed. Using the Quaternion Fourier Transform, we introduce a
quaternion-valued spectral representation of random bivariate signals seen as
complex-valued sequences. This makes possible the definition of a scalar
quaternion-valued spectral density for bivariate signals. This spectral density
can be meaningfully interpreted in terms of frequency-dependent polarization
attributes. A natural decomposition of any random bivariate signal in terms of
unpolarized and polarized components is introduced. Nonparametric spectral
density estimation is investigated, and we introduce the polarization
periodogram of a random bivariate signal. Numerical experiments support our
theoretical analysis, illustrating the relevance of the approach on synthetic
data.
