C3. Automatic digital modulation recognition of satellite communication signals

Abstract

Automatic modulation recognition is very important for communication intelligence applications such as signal interception for satellite communications, civil authority, surveillance and threat analysis. Automatic digital modulation recognition is a system that automatically classifies the modulation type of the intercepted signal. This paper presents a method for the automatic recognition of digital modulations without a priori knowledge of the signal parameters. This algorithm works at low signal to noise ratio and get nearly to 100 % of correct classification percentage at 0 dB which is effective in Electronic warfare and communication surveillance applications. This method can recognize common single-carrier modulated satellite communication signals such as M-ary phase-shift keying, M-ary quadrature amplitude modulation and M-ary amplitude phase shift keying which used in DVB-S2. This algorithm is performed by a sequential steps to blindly classify the signal using PSD of instantaneous amplitude, kurtosis and HOS (cumulants).