A Survey of Blind Modulation Classification Techniques for OFDM Signals

Blind modulation classification (MC) is an integral part of designing an adaptive or intelligent transceiver for future wireless communications. Blind MC has several applications in the adaptive and automated systems of sixth generation (6G) communications to improve spectral efficiency and power efficiency, and reduce latency. It will become a integral part of intelligent software-defined radios (SDR) for future communication. In this paper, we provide various MC techniques for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) signals in a systematic way. We focus on the most widely used statistical and machine learning (ML) models and emphasize their advantages and limitations. The statistical-based blind MC includes likelihood-based (LB), maximum a posteriori (MAP) and feature-based methods (FB). The ML-based automated MC includes k-nearest neighbors (KNN), support vector machine (SVM), decision trees (DTs), convolutional neural networks (CNNs), recurrent neural networks (RNNs), and long short-term memory (LSTM) based MC methods. This survey will help the reader to understand the main characteristics of each technique, their advantages and disadvantages. We have also simulated some primary methods, i.e., statistical- and ML-based algorithms, under various constraints, which allows a fair comparison among different methodologies. The overall system performance in terms bit error rate (BER) in the presence of MC is also provided. We also provide a survey of some practical experiment works carried out through National Instrument hardware over an indoor propagation environment. In the end, open problems and possible directions for blind MC research are briefly discussed

Deep Neural Network Architectures for Modulation Classification

This thesis investigates the value of employing deep learning for the task of wireless signal modulation recognition. Recently in deep learning research on AMC, a framework has been introduced by generating a dataset using GNU radio that mimics the imperfections in a real wireless channel, and uses 10 different modulation types. Further, a CNN architecture was developed and shown to deliver performance that exceeds that of expert-based approaches. Here, we follow the framework of O’shea [1] and find deep neural network architectures that deliver higher accuracy than the state of the art. We tested the architecture of O’shea [1] and found it to achieve an accuracy of approximately 75% of correctly recognizing the modulation type. We first tune the CNN architecture and find a design with four convolutional layers and two dense layers that gives an accuracy of approximately 83.8% at high SNR. We then develop architectures based on the recently introduced ideas of Residual Networks (ResNet) and Densely Connected Network (DenseNet) to achieve high SNR accuracies of approximately 83% and 86.6%, respectively. We also introduce a CLDNN to achieve an accuracy of approximately 88.5% at high SNR. To improve the classification accuracy of QAM, we calculate the high order cumulants of QAM16 and QAM64 as the expert feature and improve the total accuracy to approximately 90%. Finally, by preprocessing the input and send them into a LSTM model, we improve all classification success rates to 100% except the WBFM which is 46%. The average modulation classification accuracy got a improvement of roughly 22% in this thesis

Adaptive Blind MPSK Constellation Recovery and Equalization for Cognitive Radio Applications

Cognitive radio is considered a relevant communication paradigm to deal with the increasing demands in modern communications systems. Adaptive schemes are required to recognize channel conditions and to properly adjust main transmission parameters to improve the quality of communications. In this direction, blind algorithms to recover constellation, from phase-modulated signals, represent a means to implement cognitive capabilities to allow automatic modulation recognition (AMR) on receivers. Commonly, the most popular approaches for blind constellation recovery are based on a two-step scheme. The first step uses to equalize channel effects and reduce inter-symbol interference (ISI). The second step carries out constellation recovery utilizing phase locked loop (PLL) systems like the Costas Loop, then to classify the incoming signal. This work proposes a novel single-step blind adaptive filter solution, inspired by an adaptive interference canceler, for joint equalization and constellation symbol recovery from received phase shift keying (PSK) waveforms. Furthermore, we propose new coefficients update mechanisms based on the constant amplitude of PSK signals. The proposed solution exhibits reduced computational complexity compared to the state of the art and a reduced time of convergence. Additionally, the proposed scheme does not require a training sequence to operate properly. The obtained results clearly show that the proposed scheme significantly improves accuracy regarding phase symbol estimation and ISI reduction.This work has been partially funded by the Spanish National project IRENE-EARTH (PID2020-115323RB-C33 / AEI / 10.13039/501100011033) as well as by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF, Germany) within the 6G Research and Innovation Cluster 6G-RIC under Grant 16KISK020K.Publicad

Blind Demodulation of Pass Band OFDMA Signals and Jamming Battle Damage Assessment Utilizing Link Adaptation

This research focuses on blind demodulation of a pass band OFDMA signal so that jamming effectiveness can be assessed; referred to in this research as BDA. The research extends, modifies and collates work within literature to perform a new method of blindly demodulating of a passband OFDMA signal, which exhibits properties of the 802.16 Wireless MAN OFDMA standard, and presents a novel method for performing BDA via observation of SC LA. Blind demodulation is achieved by estimating the carrier frequency, sampling rate, pulse shaping filter roll off factor, synchronization parameters and CFO. The blind demodulator\u27s performance in AWGN and a perfect channel is evaluated where it improves using a greater number OFDMA DL symbols and increased CP length. Performance in a channel with a single multi-path interferer is also evaluated where the blind demodulator\u27s performance is degraded. BDA is achieved via observing SC LA modulation behavior of the blindly demodulated signal between successive OFDMA DL sub frames in two scenarios. The first is where modulation signaling can be used to observe change of SC modulation. The second assumes modulation signaling is not available and the SC\u27s modulation must be classified. Classification of SC modulation is performed using sixth-order cumulants where performance increases with the number of OFDMA symbols. The SC modulation classi er is susceptible to the CFO caused by blind demodulation. In a perfect channel it is shown that SC modulation can be classified using a variety of OFDMA DL sub frame lengths in symbols. The SC modulation classifier experienced degraded performance in a multi-path channel and it is recommended that it is extended to perform channel equalization in future work

Blind Estimation of OFDM System Parameters for Automatic Signal Identification

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) has gained worldwide popular­ ity in broadband wireless communications recently due to its high spectral efficiency and robust performance in multipath fading channels. A growing trend of smart receivers which can support and adapt to multiple OFDM based standards auto­ matically brings the necessity of identifying different standards by estimating OFDM system parameters without a priori information. Consequently, blind estimation and identification of OFDM system parameters has received considerable research atten­ tions. Many techniques have been developed for blind estimation of various OFDM parameters, whereas estimation of the sampling frequency is often ignored. Further­ more, the estimated sampling frequency of an OFDM signal has to be very accurate for data recovery due to the high sensitivity of OFDM signals to sampling clock offset. To address the aforementioned problems, we propose a two-step cyclostation- arity based algorithm with low computational complexity to precisely estimate the sampling frequency of a received oversampled OFDM signal. With this estimated sampling frequency and oversampling ratio, other OFDM system parameters, i.e., the number of subcarriers, symbol duration and cyclic prefix (CP) length can be es­ timated based on the cyclic property from CP sequentially. In addition, modulation scheme used in the OFDM can be classified based on the higher-order statistics (HOS) of the frequency domain OFDM signal. All the proposed algorithms are verified by a lab testing system including a vec­ tor signal generator, a spectrum analyzer and a high speed digitizer. The evaluation results confirm the high precision and efficacy of the proposed algorithm in realistic scenarios

Design and Implementation of a Fully Flexible Cognitive Radio Modem

Software-defined radio (SDR)-based cognitive communication radio systems are very popular at present, and there have been many investigations on this topic. This paper proposes a new type of cognitive radio transceiver (TRX) that can detect, recognize, and analyze input signals in real-time with minimal data loss. New hardware is designed and manufactured that combines a transmitter and a receiver in a dedicated integrated circuit. For data processing, a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) is used. For each integrated hardware block, appropriate software modules are developed to construct a complex adaptive radiocommunication system as a radio modem that can be configured as a transceiver or repeater. The source coder, channel coder, modulator, spectrum monitoring module, spectrum analyzer, channelizer, symbol rate detector, modulator, modulation type recognition module, demodulator, channel decoder and source decoder are all developed as software modules