Automatic modulation classification of digital modulations in presence of HF noise

Abstract

Designing an automatic modulation classifier (AMC) for high frequency (HF) band is a research challenge. This is due to the recent observation that noise distribution in HF band is changing over time. Existing AMCs are often designed for one type of noise distribution, e.g., additive white Gaussian noise. This means their performance is severely compromised in the presence of HF noise. Therefore, an AMC capable of mitigating the time-varying nature of HF noise is required. This article presents a robust AMC method for the classification of FSK, PSK, OQPSK, QAM, and amplitude-phase shift keying modulations in presence of HF noise using feature-based methods. Here, extracted features are insensitive to symbol synchronization and carrier frequency and phase offsets. The proposed AMC method is simple to implement as it uses decision-tree approach with pre-computed thresholds for signal classification. In addition, it is capable to classify type and order of modulation in both Gaussian and non-Gaussian environments. © 2012 Alharbi et al.; licensee Springer.