Modulation classifier for signals used in satellite communications

For the design of intelligent receivers, the classification of modulation schemes becomes an increasingly important task. Interestingly, the numerous papers on this subject neglect algorithms for the classification of APSK signals, although these are recommended in the DVB-S2 standard. Therefore, a feature-based method for classification of modulation schemes typically used in satellite communications, i.e. PSK, QAM and APSK, is proposed. As features, fourth- and sixth-order cumulants of the input samples are employed in this context. The performance of the moderately complex algorithm is verified by several simulation scenarios.