A novel targeted method of informative frequency band selection based on lagged information for diagnosis of gearbox single and compound faults

•Propose a novel accurate frequency band selection method for single and compound fault diagnosis.•Investigate the performance of proposed method against various Gaussian and non-Gaussian noise levels via a simulated signal of faulty gearbox.•Compare the effectiveness of proposed method with a wide range of chronologically important and/or state of the art frequency band selection methods.•Investigate the performance of the proposed method under three experimental case studies.•Study the quality of spectrum generated by the proposed method and make comparisons with other widely accepted spectra in envelope analysis.