In this paper, we propose a two-tier method for extracting fetal ECG from a single lead abdominal ECG signal. The proposed method is based on a combination of singular value decomposition (SVD) and polynomial classifiers. As a first tier, SVD is used to extract an estimate of the maternal component from the composite abdominal signal by exploiting its quasi-periodic nature. The extracted maternal signal is then used along with the abdominal composite signal to isolate the FECG component using polynomial classifiers. The proposed method is validated on both real and synthetic data. Results demonstrate effectiveness of proposed method. ©2008 IEEE.