  In this paper we design and develop several filtering strategies for the
analysis of data generated by a resonant bar Gravitational Wave (GW) antenna,
with the goal to assess the presence (or absence) in them of long duration
monochromatic GW signals, as well as their eventual amplitude and frequency,
within the sensitivity band of the detector. Such signals are most likely
generated in the fast rotation of slightly asymmetric spinning stars. We shall
develop the practical procedures, together with the study of their statistical
properties, which will provide us with useful information on each technique's
performance. The selection of candidate events will then be established
according to threshold-crossing probabilities, based on the Neyman-Pearson
criterion. In particular, it will be shown that our approach, based on phase
estimation, presents better signal-to-noise ratio than the most common one of
pure spectral analysis.
