The calculation of phase velocities in Spectral-Analysis -of-Surface -Waves (SASW) meas urements requires unwrapping phase angles. In case of layered systems with strong stiffness contrast like a pavement system, conventional phase unwrapping algorithm to add in teger multiples of 2n to the principal value of a phase angle may lead to wrong phase volocities. This is because there is difficulty in counting the number of jumps in the phase spectrum especially at the receiver spacing where the measurements are in the transition Bone of defferent modes. A new phase interpretation scheme, called "Impulse Response Fil traction ( IRF) Technique," is proposed, which is based on the separation of wave groups by the filtration of the impulse response determinded between two receivers. The separation of a wave group is based on the impulse response filtered by using information from Gabor spectrogram, which visualizes the propagation of wave groups at the frequency -time space. The filtered impulse response leads to clear interpretation of phase spectrum, which eliminates difficulty in counting number of jumps in the phase spectrum. Verification of the IRF technique was performed by theoretical simulation of the SASW measurement on a pavement system which complicates wave propagation.opagation.