Vibration Signal Denoising Method Based on ICFO-SVMD and Improved Wavelet Thresholding

Non-stationary, multi-component vibration signals in rotating machinery are easily contaminated by strong background noise, which masks weak fault features and degrades diagnostic reliability. This paper proposes a joint denoising method that combines an improved cordyceps fungus optimization algorithm (ICFO), successive variational mode decomposition (SVMD), and an improved wavelet thresholding scheme. ICFO, enhanced by Chebyshev chaotic initialization, a longitudinal–transverse crossover fusion mutation operator, and a thinking innovation strategy, is used to adaptively optimize the SVMD penalty factor and number of modes. The optimized SVMD decomposes the noisy signal into intrinsic mode functions, which are classified into effective and noise-dominated components via the Pearson correlation coefficient. An improved wavelet threshold function, whose threshold is modulated by the sub-band signal-to-noise ratio, is then applied to the effective components, and the denoised signal is reconstructed. Simulation experiments on nonlinear, non-stationary signals with different noise levels (SNR = 1–20 dB) show that the proposed method consistently achieves the highest SNR and lowest RMSE compared to VMD, SVMD, VMD–WTD, CFO–SVMD, and WTD. Tests on CWRU bearing data and gearbox vibration signals with added −2 dB Gaussian white noise further confirm that the method yields the lowest residual variance ratio and highest signal energy ratio while preserving key fault characteristic frequencies.