This paper deals with the separation problem of complex-valued signals in the independent component analysis (ICA) framework, where sources are linearly and instantaneously mixed. Inspired by the recently proposed reference-based contrast criteria based on kurtosis, a new contrast function is put forward by introducing the reference-based scheme to negentropy, based on which a novel fast fixed-point (FastICA) algorithm is proposed. This method is similar in spirit to the classical negentropy-based FastICA algorithm, but differs in the fact that it is much more efficient than the latter in terms of computational speed, which is significantly striking with large number of samples. Furthermore, compared with the kurtosis-based