Accepted Manuscript

Automatic modulation classification based on high order cumulants

and hierarchical polynomial classifiers

Ameen Abdelmutalab, Khaled Assaleh, Mohamed El-Tarhuni

PII: S1874-4907(16)30109-4
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.phycom.2016.08.001
Reference: PHYCOM 338

To appear in: Physical Communication

Received date: 6 November 2015

Revised date: 17 July 2016
Accepted date: 24 August 2016

Please cite this article as: A. Abdelmutalab, K. Assaleh, M. El-Tarhuni, Automatic modulation
classification based on high order cumulants and hierarchical polynomial classifiers, Physical
Communication (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.phycom.2016.08.001

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9 Automatic Modulation Classification Based on
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11 High Order Cumulants and Hierarchical
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13 Polynomial Classifiers
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16 Ameen Abdelmutalab, Khaled Assaleh, Mohamed El-Tarhuni
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Electrical Engineering Dept.
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19 American University of Sharjah, Sharjah, UAE
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25 Abstract
26 In this paper, a Hierarchical Polynomial (HP) classifier is proposed to auto-
27
28 matically classify M-PSK and M-QAM signals in Additive White Gaussian
29 Noise (AWGN) and slow flat fading environments. The system uses higher
30 order cumulants (HOCs) of the received signal to distinguish between the
31
32
different modulation types. The proposed system divides the overall modula-
33 tion classification problem into several hierarchical binary sub-classifications.
34 In each binary sub-classification, the HOCs are expanded into a higher di-
35 mensional space in which the two classes are linearly separable. It is shown
36
37 that there is a significant improvement when using the proposed Hierarchi-
38 cal polynomial structure compared to the conventional polynomial classifier.
39 Moreover, simulation results are shown for different block lengths (number of
40
received symbols) and at different SNR values. The proposed system showed
41
42 an overall improvement in the probability of correct classification that reaches
43 100% using only 512 received symbols at 20 dB compared to 98% and 98.33%
44 when using more complicated systems like Genetic Programing with KNN
45
46 classifier (GP-KNN) and Support Vector Machines (SVM) classifiers, respec-
47 tively.
48
49 Keywords: Modulation Classification, Hierarchical Polynomial Classifiers,
50 High Order Cumulants, Adaptive Modulation.
51
52
53
54 Email addresses: [email protected] (Ameen Abdelmutalab),
55 [email protected] ( Khaled Assaleh), [email protected] ( Mohamed
56 El-Tarhuni)
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59 Preprint submitted to Physical Communication July 4, 2016
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9 1. Introduction
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11 Automatic Modulation Classification (AMC) is the process of identifying
12
13 the modulation type of the transmitted signal from the received data samples
14 automatically [1]; it is an intermediate step between signal detection and de-
15 modulation [2]. AMC has received a great deal of research and investigation
16 in recent years because of its various applications in modern communication
17
18 systems. For example, in cognitive radio (CR) systems, AMC is used to
19 identify the types of signals in the spectrum. This information can be used
20 to efficiently utilize the available spectrum and increase the data through-
21
22
put [3]. In OFDM systems, AMC is used to identify the modulation type
23 in each subcarrier. Accordingly, the appropriate demodulator is selected.
24 On the other hand, the classical method of signaling the bit allocation table
25 (BAT) to inform the receiver about the subcarrier modulation level degrades
26
27 the system throughput significantly [4]. Moreover, AMC has been used in
28 many military applications such as: spectrum surveillance, electronic warfare
29 and threat analysis [5]. For example, AMC can be used to identify the modu-
30 lation type of an intercepted enemies’ signal so that the original transmitted
31
32 message can be extracted [6].
33 AMC algorithms are divided into two main categories: Likelihood-Based
34 (LB) schemes and Feature-Based (FB) schemes. The LB schemes deal with
35
36
the automatic modulation classification problem as a multi-hypothesis prob-
37 lem in which a modulation type with the maximum likelihood among all the
38 candidates will be assigned to the received signal [7]. Many types of LB
39 algorithms were suggested in the literature, such as the Average Likelihood
40
41 Ratio Test (ALRT) [8], Generalized Likelihood Ratio Test (GLRT) [8], Hy-
42 brid Likelihood Ratio Test (HLRT) [7] and Quasi-Hybrid Likelihood Ratio
43 Test (QHLRT) [7]. Normally, LB approaches are computationally complex
44
and their performance degrades considerably in the existence of phase or
45
46 frequency offset or impulsive noise [9].
47 In contrast, FB schemes are simpler to implement and can achieve a very
48 close performance to LB schemes if the used features are chosen properly
49
50
[10]. Different types of received signal features are suggested in the literature
51 such as instantaneous amplitude, phase, and frequency [11], wavelet trans-
52 form [12], fourier transform [13], high order moments (HOMs), high order
53 cumulants (HOCs) [5, 14, 15], higher-order cyclic cumulants [16], very high
54
55 order statistics (VHOS) [17] and constellation diagram [18]. In general, the
56 selection of the proper features depends mainly on the modulation types of
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9 interest. The selected features are used by a machine learning classifier to
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11
determine the modulation type of a received signal. Various types of clas-
12 sifiers are used in the field like Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) [19], Sup-
13 port Vector Machines (SVM) [20], Clustering Algorithms, K-Nearest Neigh-
14 bors (KNN) [3], Polynomial Classifier (PC) [21], Threshold-Based Classi-
15
16 fiers [14, 22] and Naı̈ve Bayes Classifier [23]. Furthermore, some work used
17 optimization techniques such as Genetic Programming [3, 24, 25] and Par-
18 ticle Swarm Optimization (PSO) [20] in order to improve the classification
19 features. However, classifiers differ in their complexity, accuracy and pro-
20
21 cessing time. Another factor that limits a classifier’s accuracy is the channel
22 conditions through which the signal is transmitted. Many authors investi-
23 gated AMC schemes in AWGN channels as in [23, 24], whereas, other authors
24
25
have considered more realistic channel models that took into consideration
26 multipath fading [26].
27 Moreover, AMC can be implemented using one transmitter and one re-
28 ceiver, or one transmitter and multiple receivers. In the later method, the
29
30 decision can be made by each receiver and then passed to a centralized sys-
31 tem to vote, or all the received signals are directly processed by a centralized
32 system [27].
33
It is noted that some modulation types are easier to classify such as
34
35 BPSK and QPSK signals compared to modulation types with dense constel-
36 lations like 64-QAM and 256-QAM. In both scenarios, the performance of the
37 classifier is affected by the number of samples from which the features are ex-
38
39 tracted. Intuitively, the more the samples used in extracting the features the
40 more accurate the system performs (for the case of AWGN channels). How-
41 ever, increasing the number of samples may reduce the system performance
42 due to the unexpected phase drift, residual frequency offset, and timing error.
43
44 This work is a continuation of our previous work proposed in [21] where only
45 one multidimensional polynomial classifier was used to classify the different
46 modulation types. It has been noticed that a severe drop in the probability of
47
48
correct classification of the single polynomial classifier is observed when the
49 number of considered modulation types increases. The probability of correct
50 classification (PCC) is defined as the number of correctly classified signals
51 divided by the total number of signals.
52
53 In this work, this problem is solved by using a tree structure of binary
54 polynomial classifiers, where each classifier is trained to identify two classes
55 at time. The proposed system has the following advantages:
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9 • Provides higher probability of correct classification compared to most
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of the proposed systems in the literature.
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13 • Has low computational complexity and can be easily implemented.
14
15 • Has an acceptable probability of correct classification for the case of
16 slow Rician or Rayleigh fading.
17
18 The rest of the paper is organized as follows: section 2 shows the signal
19 model and introduces high order cumulants. Section 3 explains the system
20
21 model, section 4 shows the simulation results, whereas the conclusion is pre-
22 sented in section 5.
23
24
25 2. SIGNAL MODEL AND HOCs
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27 In this work, the signals are assumed to be transmitted over a slow flat
28 fading channel, which resembles realistic channel conditions especially when
29 using OFDM systems to mitigate the effect of frequency selective fading
30
channels. The baseband discrete-time received signal contaminated by Ad-
31
32 ditive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) in a flat fading environment can be
33 expressed as:
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36
yn = hn xn + wn , n = 1, ..., N (1)
37 where xn is the discrete-time transmitted signal, wn is the AWGN process
38
39 with zero mean and two-sided power spectral density N20 , hn is the complex-
40 valued channel gain assumed to follow a Gaussian distribution, and N is
41 the number of transmitted symbols per frame. The transmitted signal xn is
42 selected from L possible modulation types. In this work we consider BPSK,
43
44 QPSK, 8-PSK, 16-QAM, 64-QAM or 256-QAM modulation types (i.e. L =
45 6). Moreover, we assume that the noise variance is known or can be estimated
46 at the receiver.
47
48
The multipath fading effect on the amplitude of the received signal is
49 modeled using Rayleigh or Rician fading models. Furthermore, the rela-
50 tive motion between the transmitter and the receiver causes a shift in the
51 frequency of the received signal fd “Doppler Shift”. The effect of different
52
53 values of Doppler shift on the proposed automatic modulation classification
54 scheme is investigated in this work.
55 The Higher order cumulants (HOCs) are estimated from the received
56 signal and used as input features to the proposed classifier. Generally, HOCs
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9 are expressed as functions of the signals’ High Order Moments (HOMs). For
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a complex-valued stationary random process y, the pth order moment is
12 defined as [22]
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14 Mpq = E yp−q (y∗ )q (2)
15
16 where y∗ is the complex conjugate of y, and q is the power of the conjugate
17
signal y∗ . Table 1 shows the relationship between the HOCs and HOMs [24].
18
19
20
Table 1: High order cumulants and High order moments proposed in [3]
21
22
23 HOCs HOMs Expression
24 C20 M20
Second Order Cumulants
25 C21 M21
26 C40 M40 − 3M20 2
27
28
Fourth Order Cumulants C41 M40 − 3M20 M21
29 C42 M42 − |M20 |2 − 2M21
2

30 C60 M60 − 15M20 M40 + 30M20 3

31 C61 M61 −5M21 M40 −10M20 M41 +
32
33
30M20
2 M
21
C62 M62 − 6M20 M42 − 8M21 M41 −
34 Sixth Order Cumulants
35 M22 M40 + 6M20 2 M
22 +
36 24M21 M20
2
37 C63 M63 − 9M21 M42 + 12M21 3 −
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39 3M20 M43 − 3M22 M41 +
40 18M20 M21 M22
41
42 Feature normalization is required in order for machine learning algorithms
43
44 to work properly. For normalization, HOCs are rescaled as described in [28]
45 with each cumulant raised to the power p2 , where p is the order of the
46 1 1

47 cumulant, i.e. Ĉ42 = C422

and Ĉ63 = C63
3
.
48 For more simplicity, the magnitudes of the cumulants are used instead
49 of their complex values. This step has a great advantage in reducing the
50
51 processing time in the training stage because the classifier weights are real-
52 valued in this case instead of being complex. Another advantage of using the
53 cumulants magnitude is reduced vulnerability to shifts in the constellation.
54
55
As the phase shift does not affect the magnitude of the cumulants while it
56 may affect their imaginary part [28]. Finally, we remark that some HOCs are
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9 more useful in separating a particular group of modulation types than the
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others, hence, it is desirable to decide on which HOCs to use automatically
12 by the proposed scheme.
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15 3. PROPOSED SYSTEM
16
17 The objective of this work is to develop an AMC scheme that would allow
18 the receiver to decide (classify) on which of the L possible modulation types
19 is used by the transmitter to send a given block of data. In this work, AMC is
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21
treated as a pattern recognition problem, where features are extracted from
22 the received signal and used in a classifier to decide upon the modulation
23 level. The features used in this work are the HOCs of the received signal and
24 the classifier used is a hierarchical polynomial (HP) classifier. It is noted that
25
26 the performance of any pattern recognition scheme depends on the selected
27 features applied to the classifier and the capability of the classifier itself.
28 The performance of the classifier is measured by its probability of correct
29
classification and computational complexity. In this section, we introduce
30
31 the proposed HP classifier and discuss its training and testing stages.
32
33 3.1. Hierarchical Polynomial Classifier
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35 The Weierstrass approximation theorem states that: “every real-valued
36 continuous function on a finite closed interval [a, b] can be uniformly ap-
37 proximated by polynomials with real coefficients” and “every complex-valued
38 continuous function on a finite closed interval [a, b] can be uniformly approx-
39
40 imated by polynomials with complex coefficients” [29]. According to this
41 theorem, a polynomial classifier can be used to approximate the nonlinear
42 boundaries between different classes. A polynomial classifier is a machine
43
44
learning algorithm that expands the original set of features in a given space
45 to a higher dimensional space in which the different classes become linearly
46 separated. Due to its simplicity and high accuracy, it has been used in vari-
47 ety of fields such as speech recognition [30], cognitive radio systems [31] and
48
49 biomedical application [32].
50 Fig. 1 shows a binary classification example in the original features space
51 d1 and d2 . It can be noticed that the two classes are nonlinearly separable
52
and can only be separated by a quadratic function. While, the new set of
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54 features x1 , x2 and x3 derived from an expansion of d1 and d2 can linearly
55 separate the two classes in a higher dimensional
√ space (3 dimensions in this
56 2 2
case), where x1 = d1 , x2 = d2 and x3 = 2d1 d2 .
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24 Figure 1: Classification features in the original space and in the high dimensional space.
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26 Similar to any supervised learning algorithm, a polynomial classifier has
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28 two main stages, as shown in Fig. 2. First, a training stage in which features
29 from labeled training signals are used in calculating the classifier weights,
30 and then a testing stage where unlabeled signals are applied to the classifier
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to identify the classes of these signals.
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53 Figure 2: Training and testing stages.
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55 The proposed HP classifier is shown in Fig. 3, where the classification of
56 the six modulation types is done in hierarchical binary-classifications stages.
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9 In each stage, modulations having features of similar values are clustered in
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one class and the rest are placed in a second class. Accordingly, the received
12 signal is firstly classified to be PSK or QAM. In the next stage, if the signal is
13 PSK, two new classes are introduced, BPSK as a class and QPSK and 8-PSK
14 as another class. If the signal is classified as BPSK the classification proce-
15
16 dure is completed, otherwise, another binary classification between QPSK
17 and 8-PSK is introduced. The same principle applies for the QAM types as
18 shown in Fig. 3. This process helps in optimizing the weights in each binary
19 classification stage leading to an overall improvement in the classification ac-
20
21 curacy. In contrast, the conventional polynomial classifier (non-hierarchical)
22 used in [21] has less classification accuracy, especially for high values of L. To
23 illustrate this, let us consider a case of six modulation types BPSK, QPSK,
24
25
8-PSK, 16-QAM, 64-QAM and 256-QAM, a conventional polynomial classi-
26 fier will try to find the optimum set of weights for each modulation type, six
27 weight vectors in this case. For example, the weight vector corresponding
28 to BPSK modulation is calculated based on the assumption that BPSK is
29
30 one class while QPSK, 8-PSK, 16-QAM, 64-QAM and 256-QAM are another
31 class. This is a valid assumption knowing that BPSK has a very different
32 constellation compared to the others, accordingly, conventional polynomial
33
classifier always gives the right decision when the transmitted signal is BPSK.
34
35 In contrary, the weight vector corresponding to 64-QAM is calculated based
36 on the assumption that 64-QAM is one class and BPSK, QPSK, 8-PSK,
37 16-QAM and 256-QAM are another class. The problem arises in this case,
38
39 because the classifier assumes that very different modulation types like BPSK
40 and 256-QAM belong to the same class while 64-QAM which is very similar
41 to 256-QAM is a totally different class. This is why conventional polynomial
42 classifier tends to miss-classify 64-QAM as 256-QAM. The hierarchical poly-
43
44 nomial classifier solved this problem by using a single binary classification at
45 a time, two set of weights are calculated to classify 64-QAM and 256-QAM,
46 and there is no confusion introduced by using the other modulation types in
47
48
the training.
49
50 3.2. Training Stage
51 Second, fourth and sixth order cumulants are used as features from each
52
53 received signal with known modulation type. The obtained features are ex-
54 panded into a higher dimensional space using a polynomial classifier in or-
55 der to produce more features and allow for easier separation of the classes.
56 The order of the polynomial classifier determines the dimensionality of the
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29 Figure 3: Hierarchical Polynomial Classifier.
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32 space. Although higher order polynomial classifiers could be used, but for
33 implementation simplicity, a second order polynomial classifier is normally
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35 implemented, where the new set of features is the original features plus their
36 products and squared values. For instance, for an input feature vector d
37 composed of normalized HOCs defined as d = [d1 , d2 , ... , dM ], the expanded
38
39
feature vector p is expressed as [21]:
40
41  
42 1, d1 , ... , dM , d1 × d2 , ... , d1 × dM , d2 × d3 , ... , d2 × dM , ...
p=
43 , dM −1 × dM , d21 , d22 , ... , d2M 1×R
44
(3)
45
46 where M is the number of HOCs used as input features, and R is the
47 dimension of the expanded feature vector.
48 The proposed scheme is capable of classifying any number of modulation
49
50 schemes using the appropriate hierarchical approach with two classes at time.
51 To explain how a polynomial classifier works, let us consider a case of two
52 modulation types, for example BPSK and QPSK. In order to train the poly-
53 nomial classifier, K training signals are transmitted using BPSK and another
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55 K training signals using QPSK modulations. Second, fourth and sixth order
56 cumulants are estimated from each training signal and the corresponding p
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9 vector is calculated using (3). After that, a new matrix vl that has all the
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expanded feature vectors for modulation type l is defined as:
12  (l) 
13 p1
14 p(l) 
 
15 vl =  .2  l = 1, 2 (4)
16  .. 
17 (l)
18
pK K×R
19 By rearranging both of v1 for BPSK modulation and v2 for QPSK in a
20
new matrix V, we get:
21
22  
v
23 V= 1 (5)
24 v2 2K×R
25
26 Next step is to calculate the classifier weights , wo1 for BPSK and wo2
27 for QPSK. In order to do so, the weights are selected to minimize the mean
28 square error as:
29
30
31 wol = arg min kVwl − tl k2 (6)
wl
32
33 where wl is an R × 1 vector and tl is the target matrix defined as:
34  
35 1
36 t1 = , when calculating wo1 (7)
0 2K×1
37  
38 0
39 t2 = , when calculating wo2 (8)
40
1 2K×1
41 and
42
43
44 0 = [0, 0, ..., 0]T
1×K (9)
45
46
47
1 = [1, 1, ..., 1]T
1×K (10)
48 Equation (6) can be simply written as:
49
50
51 Vwol = tl (11)
52 Then:
53
54
wol = V† tl (12)
†
55 where V is the pseudo inverse of matrix V [33]. Finally, after finding wo1
56 and wo2 , the classifier is ready for the testing stage.
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9 3.3. Testing Stage
10
11 In the testing stage, the objective is to find the identity of an unlabeled
12 modulated signal (either BPSK or QPSK for the example under considera-
13 tion). To classify the modulation type, the HOCs feature vector d is first
14
15 extracted from the received signal and the expanded vector p is calculated
16 using the second order expansion in (3). Then, vector p is multiplied by
17 classifier weights wo1 and wo2 obtained during the training stage to give the
18 scores s1 and s2 , respectively, to decide on the modulation type. Ideally, the
19
20 weights are optimized during the training stage to give s1 = 1 and s2 = 0
21 if the modulation is type one (BPSK), and to give s1 = 0 and s2 = 1 if the
22 modulation is type two (QPSK). Since the received symbols are noisy, the
23
24
decision is made based on the maximum values of s1 and s2 , meaning that
25 if s1 > s2 then the modulation is BPSK, and if s2 > s1 the modulation is
26 QPSK. Hence,
27
28
29 Class identity l = arg max {sl } (13)
l
30
31 The previous example explained the modulation classification process for
32 only two modulation types, BPSK and QPSK. In this work, we consider a
33 more general classification problem among all of BPSK, QPSK, 8-PSK, 16-
34
35 QAM, 64-QAM and 256-QAM. Using the same concept introduced before,
36 we divide the modulation classification process into binary sub-classification
37 stages. In the first stage PSK signals are treated as one class and QAM signals
38 as another class. In other words, we define a problem of two modulation
39
40 groups, PSK modulation group that has BPSK, QPSK and 8-PSK signals,
41 and QAM modulation group that has 16-QAM, 64-QAM and 256-QAM.
42 K training signals form BPSK, QPSK and 8-PSK are used to calculated
43
44
matrix v1 , and K training signals form 16-QAM, 64-QAM and 256-QAM
45 are used to calculated matrix v2 . Following the same procedure, wo1 and
46 wo2 are calculated in the training stage. In the testing stage if s1 > s2 the
47 received signal is PSK and if s2 > s1 the received signal is QAM. If the signal
48
49 is decided to be PSK, another binary modulation classification problem is
50 considered. This time, another polynomial classifier is used where matrix v1
51 has the expanded feature vector of BPSK modulation, and matrix v2 has
52
the expanded feature vector of both QPSK and 8-PSK. Accordingly, in the
53
54 testing stage, if s1 > s2 the received signal is BPSK and if s2 > s1 the
55 received signal is either QPSK or 8-PSK, and another polynomial classifier
56 is used to determine whether the modulation type is QPSK or 8-PSK using
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9 the same illustrated concept. The same idea is used if the signal is decided
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to be QAM, as shown in Fig. 3.
12
13 4. SIMULATION RESULTS
14
15 In this section, the performance of the proposed AMC scheme is exam-
16
17 ined under different channel conditions and is compared to other methods
18 from the literature. First, the advantage of the proposed classifier over the
19 traditional threshold-based method is investigated. A simulation involving
20
21
the generation of 1000 different realizations of 16-QAM and 64-QAM signals
22 is conducted at 20 dB signal-to-noise (SNR), with each signal represents a
23 block of N = 2000 symbols. The conventional method for classifying 16-
24 QAM and 64-QAM signals uses the value of fourth order cumulant C42 or
25
26 the value of the sixth order cumulant C63 as defined in [34]. Using a threshold
27 to decide on the modulation type is not the optimal solution. Fig. 4 shows
28 that, there is no optimum threshold value for C42 or C63 that can accurately
29
separate the two modulation types. On the other hand, Fig. 5 shows the two
30
31 output scores when using the proposed polynomial classifier with the same
32 input features C42 and C63 . In this scenario, when 16-QAM is transmitted
33 (the first 1000 signals), then the first score s1 is always greater than the sec-
34
35 ond score s2 . The opposite happens when the transmitted signal is 64-QAM
36 (signals numbered 1001 to 2000), where the second score s2 is always greater
37 than the first score s1 . Using the values of s1 and s2 , a probability of correct
38 classification close to 100% is obtained.
39
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54 Figure 4: Features in the original dimensional space.
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36 Figure 5: The two scores (super features) of the polynomial classifier.
37
38
39 4.1. Hierarchical Polynomial Classifier
40
41 In this section and the next section, the expanded feature vector p is
42 calculated from the nine HOCs in Table 1 and used to distinguish between
43
44
the different modulation types. In Fig. 6, a classification problem among
45 BPSK, QPSK, 8-PSK, 16-QAM, 64-QAM and 256-QAM is considered un-
46 der AWGN channel conditions. First, we have compared the performance
47 of the proposed HP classifier with the conventional polynomial (CP), i.e.
48
49 nonhierarchical, classifier, under the assumption that no SNR information
50 is available at the receiver side. During the training stage, signals with dif-
51 ferent known SNR values are used to calculate an average classifier weights.
52 The average weights are then used during the testing stage to classify the
53
54 modulation type of unknown signals regardless of the received signal SNR.
55 The results show that the HP classifier provides better correct classifica-
56 tion of the modulation type than the CP scheme, especially at higher values
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9 of SNR. However, due to the lack of SNR information, the performance of
10
11
both schemes reaches an upper limit indicating the non-optimality of select-
12 ing the classifier weights. Then, we investigated the case when the SNR
13 is known at the receiver. Accordingly, classifier weights are calculated for
14 each SNR value in the training stage. Then, based on the estimated SNR
15
16 of the received signal, the corresponding classifier weights are used in the
17 testing stage. The results presented in Fig. 6 show that when perfect SNR
18 information is available at the receiver then significant improvement in the
19 classification accuracy can be achieved; reaching to about 100% accuracy for
20
21 SNR above 12 dB. The advantage of using the proposed HP over the CP in
22 the two scenarios is clearly demonstrated.
23
24
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26
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33
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35
36
37
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39 Figure 6: Probability of Correct Classification in AWGN only for CP and HP classifiers.
40
41 The effect of using different number of symbols per data block on the
42 probability of correct classification of HP classifier is shown in Fig. 7. It is
43
44 shown that using a larger number of received symbols to extract the classifica-
45 tion features improves the probability of correct classification. For example,
46 using N =5000 symbols leads to a 4 dB improvement in SNR compared to
47 N =1000 symbols. From Fig. 6 and Fig. 7, it is clear that the probability of
48
49 correct classification is a function of SNR of the channel and signal’s block
50 length, this is due to the variation in HOCs values based on these param-
51 eters. While HOCs have average constant values (usually considered as a
52
53
reference to identify the modulation type), the variation from these average
54 values increases with low SNR and small block lengths resulting in signals
55 misclassification [35].
56 Table 2 shows the confusion matrix for the six modulation types (BPSK,
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Figure 7: Probability of Correct Classification in AWGN only for different number of
26
symbols.
27
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29
30
QPSK, 8-PSK, 16-QAM, 64-QAM and 245-QAM) when N = 10000 and at
31 SNR of 10 dB. Each row represents the actual modulation type (2000 signals
32 are transmitted per each modulation type), and the column represents the
33 predicted modulation identity by the classifier. For example, when sending
34
35 2000 signals of modulation type 16-QAM, the system was able to recognize
36 it as 16-QAM all the time. Whereas, when sending 2000 signals of mod-
37 ulation type 64-QAM, The system classified 1887 of them as 64-QAM and
38 misclassified 113 signals as 256-QAM. Table 3 shows the confusion matrix
39
40 for N = 5000 and at SNR of 5 dB. It is clear that the number of misclassified
41 signals in this case is higher compared to Table 2. This is expected, since
42 the number of transmitted symbols per signal is less than the case in Table 2
43
44
and the SNR is lower. Moreover, Most of the modulation misclassification is
45 between 64-QAM and 256-QAM, since they have very similar constellations
46 especially at low SNR. However, for the sake of simplicity and to be able
47 to compare our work to the published work in the literature, we calculate
48
49 the average probability of correct classification for the six modulation types,
50 which equals to 98.04% in Table 2 and 86.52% in Table 3 .
51 The performance of the proposed scheme is investigated in slow flat fading
52
channel conditions with magnitude follows Rayleigh (no line of sight) or
53
54 Rician fading (with line of sight component) whereas the phase is uniformly
55 distributed and is assumed to be constant during the symbol period. Without
56 loss of generality, the Rician factor, which represents the ratio between the
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9 power of the direct path and the power of the reflected paths, is assumed
10
11
to be 6 dB. The parameters used are the same as in [28] with a symbol
12 rate of 1 × 106 symbols per second, average path gains [0, −10] dB, path
13 delays [0, 1 × 10−7 ] seconds, and maximum Doppler shift of 3Hz, 30Hz,
14 or 83Hz. Fig. 8 and Fig. 9 show the probability of correct classification
15
16 for N =5000 with different values of maximum Doppler shifts in Rician and
17 Rayleigh fading, respectively. The maximum Doppler shift and the SNR of
18 the channel are assumed to be known at the receiver side. Accordingly these
19 values are used to train the classifier. It is clear that the probability of correct
20
21 classification is higher for Rician fading channels compared to Rayleigh fading
22 channels. This is because of the existence of the strong signal due to the line
23 of sight component. It is noted that a higher Doppler shift results in lower
24
25
probability of correct classification. Finally, Fig. 10 shows The classification
26 performance as a function of the number of received symbols and Doppler
27 shift for flat Rayleigh fading channels.
28
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36
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42
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44
45 Figure 8: Probability of Correct Classification in slow Rician fading channels.
46
47
48
49
4.2. Comparison to Related Work
50 Table 4 compares the probability of correct classification of the Naı̈ve
51 Bayes classifier, Support Vector Machines (SVM) classifier, Genetic program-
52
53 ming with KNN classifier and the proposed Hierarchical Polynomial (HP)
54 classifier. To ensure fair comparison, the proposed classifier is simulated us-
55 ing the same parameters used by the other authors. In particular, we used
56 four modulation types (BPSK, QPSK, 16-QAM and 64-QAM) with 512, 1024
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9
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26 Figure 9: Probability of Correct Classification in slow Rayleigh fading channels.
27
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31
32
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35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44 Figure 10: Probability of Correct Classification versus the number of symbols for different
45 values of Doppler shift.
46
47
48 and 2048 symbols per signal. The proposed HP classifier achieved a proba-
49
50 bility of correct classification of 100% at 20 dB for the three given scenarios
51 N=512, 1024 and 2048 symbols. For N=512 at 10 dB HP classifier managed
52 to achieve a 96.49% accuracy, whereas, GP-KNN, SVM and Naı̈ve Bayes
53 classifiers reported accuracy of 94%, 91.23% and 90.17%, respectively. It is
54
55 clear that the proposed HP classifier outperformed the three other classifiers
56 in terms of probability of correct classification. However, the probability of
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7
8
9 correct classification is not the only factor that favors one classifier over an-
10
11
other. A crucial factor is the system complexity and the order of calculations
12 involved in making the classifier decision. Since, modulation classification is
13 a real-time identification problem, systems with simple structure and low
14 complexity are preferred.
15
16
17 Table 2: Confusion Matrix for N=10000 at SNR=10 dB (98.04%)
18
19
20 BPSK QPSK 8-PSK 16-QAM 64-QAM 256-QAM
21
22
BPSK 2000 0 0 0 0 0
23
24
25 QPSK 0 2000 0 0 0 0
26
27
8-PSK 0 0 2000 0 0 0
28
29
30 16-QAM 0 0 0 2000 0 0
31
32
33 64-QAM 0 0 0 0 1887 113
34
35 64-QAM 0 0 0 0 122 1878
36
37
38
39 The complexity of a classifier can be analyzed based on the complexity
40 of the training stage (offline) and the complexity of the testing stage (on-
41 line). In the training stage, GP-KNN and SVM use iterative approaches
42 and consume significant processing time to provide the final training model,
43
44 especially for the case of GP-KNN where different function pools are used
45 to calculate the final training model. However, for our proposed system and
46 Naı̈ve Bayes classifier, the training process is straight forward without any
47
48
iterations involved. In general, the complexity of the training stage does not
49 usually matter if the calculations in the testing stage are simple, because the
50 training is performed offline.
51 In the testing stage, nine features are applied to the proposed HP clas-
52
53 sifier, and the classifier expands them forming a new feature vector with 55
54 features. It is noted that the only complexity in this method is calculating
55 the expanded feature vector and then multiplying it by the classifier weights.
56 The complexity of the proposed HP classifier can be estimated as O(2f )
57
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9
10 Table 3: Confusion Matrix for N=5000 at SNR=5 dB (86.52%)
11
12
BPSK QPSK 8-PSK 16-QAM 64-QAM 256-QAM
13
14
15 BPSK 2000 0 0 0 0 0
16
17
QPSK 0 2000 0 0 0 0
18
19
20 8-PSK 0 0 2000 0 0 0
21
22
16-QAM 0 0 0 1811 189 0
23
24
25 64-QAM 0 0 0 29 1276 695
26
27
28 64-QAM 0 0 0 3 701 1296
29
30
31 Table 4: Comparison to other systems in the literature
32
33
Probability of Correct Classification (%)
34
35 N SNR Naı̈ve SVM GP-KNN HP (proposed
36 (dB) [23] [23] [3] method)
37 0 63.91 64.53 65 65.78
38 512 10 90.17 91.23 94 96.49
39
40 20 94.66 98.33 98 100
41 0 69.68 70.3 70 71.99
42 1024 10 94.4 94.81 98 99.10
43 20 98.28 98.89 100 100
44
45
0 76.75 75.73 75 77.60
46 2048 10 97.89 97.92 100 99.96
47 20 99.68 99.78 100 100
48
49
50 where f is the dimension of the expanded feature vector, and the factor 2
51
52
is for the two binary sub-classification required for each decision. This com-
53 plexity is constant even if the number of the training samples is high. On
54 the other hand, for the case of the GP-KNN system, the complexity is much
55 higher, since it contains the complexity of finding the final super feature (the
56
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2
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7
8
9 calculations to find this super feature depends on the pool function used like
10
11
(plus, minus, times, reciprocal, negator, abs, sqrt, sin, cos, tan, asin, acos,
12 tanh) [24]. Furthermore, in GP-KNN classifier, the distance is calculated
13 between the calculated super feature and all the training samples; for exam-
14 ple the number of the reference points in [36] is 400 points, accordingly, after
15
16 finding the super feature the distances between this super feature and the 400
17 reference points are calculated. Hence, the overall complexity of GP-KNN is
18 O(N ) where N =400 plus the complexity of generating the super feature.
19 For the SVM and Naı̈ve Bayes classifiers in the testing stage the complex-
20
21 ity is less than GP-KNN classifier, but their overall classification accuracy is
22 relatively lower. Finally, it is rational that the more complex computations
23 the classifier performs the higher probability of correct classification it pro-
24
25
vides. Yet in our proposed system, we managed to achieve high classification
26 accuracy and maintain simple classifier structure.
27
28
29 5. CONCLUSION
30
31 In this paper, a hierarchical polynomial classifier is used for automatic
32 modulation classification of M-PSK and M-QAM signals. Higher order cu-
33 mulants features are extracted from the received signal and applied to the
34
35 proposed classifier. The proposed scheme expands the original feature vector
36 into a higher dimensional space in which the classes are easily classified. It
37 has been shown that using the channel information at the receiver side to
38 train the classifier improves the probability of correct classification signifi-
39
40 cantly. Moreover, using higher number of received symbols to extract the
41 classification features results in a higher probability of correct classification.
42 For channels with slow flat fading, the proposed system showed no degrada-
43
44
tion due to the phase shift in the constellation. Then, a relationship between
45 the number of the received symbols used to extract the classification features
46 and the probability of correct classification is investigated for different sce-
47 narios of Doppler shifts. Finally, the advantage of the proposed system is
48
49 investigated in terms of accuracy and calculations complexity compared to
50 other work in the literature.
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*Brief Biography
Click here to download Brief Biography: Author-Bio.pdf

Author Biography

Ameen Abdelmutalab received the B.Sc. degree from the University of Khartoum, Sudan in 2011
and the M.Sc. degree from the American University of Sharjah, UAE in 2015. He is currently a Ph.D.
candidate at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. After completing his B.Sc., he worked as a
teaching assistant at the University of Khartoum and the University of Science and Technology in
Sudan. He also worked as a graduate teaching assistant during his studies at the American
University of Sharjah. His research interests include wireless communications, cognitive radio,
machine-learning applications and image and video processing.

Khaled Assaleh is currently a Professor of electrical engineering at the American University of

Sharjah, UAE where he is also the interim vice provost for research and graduate studies. He
received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey in
1993. Upon completing his PhD he worked as a Research Professor at the CAIP Center of Rutgers
University for one year. He then had an 8-year career in industry with Motorola, Inc. in Phoenix,
Arizona and with Rockwell Semiconductor Systems (Conexant/Skyworks) in Newport Beach,
California. Dr. Assaleh holds 12 US patents and has published over 100 articles in signal processing
and pattern recognition and their applications. His research interests include bio-signal
processing, biometrics, speech processing, and pattern recognition. Dr. Assaleh has served in the
organization committees of several international conferences in different capacities. He has also
served as a guest editor for several journal special issues.

Mohamed El-Tarhuni received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in electrical engineering from the
University of Benghazi, Libya, in 1986 and 1990, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical
engineering from Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, in 1997. From 1987 to 1993, he was with
the General Electric Company of Libya, Benghazi, Libya, as a Telecommunications Engineer and
Manager of the Communications Department. From 1997 to 2000, he was with Nortel Networks,
Ottawa, ON, Canada, as a member of Scientific Staff, working on third-generation wireless
communication systems using CDMA technology. He has been with the American University of
Sharjah (AUS), Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (UAE), since 2000, where is currently a Professor
and Associate Dean for the College of Engineering. From 2001 to 2006, he was the Director for
the Cisco Regional Networking Academy, AUS. He was the Head of Electrical Engineering
Department from 2006 to 2014. His current research interests include wireless and mobile radio
systems, cognitive radio, and physical layer issues. Dr. El-Tarhuni has served on the organizing and
technical committees of many international conferences. He served as the IEEE Industry Relations
Officer for the IEEE UAE Section from 2002 to 2006. He is a senior member of the IEEE.
*Author Photo
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*Author Photo
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*Author Photo
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