Digital Modulation Identification by Basic Modulation Parameters

Modulation identification has been a very well-researched area in the communication especially in the electronic warfare (EW), electronic support measures (ESM), electronic counter measures (ECM) and electronic counter-counter measures (ECCM). Many researchers have developed different algorithms for analogue and digital modulation identification. The concept of software based radio with the advancement in the radio communication has also pushed the researchers to integrate the wireless receivers. This certainly needs the identification of modulation technique for accurate reception of the signals. The integration of the receivers for the software based radio would require the modulation identification at the receivers end. Meaning thereby, an intelligent algorithm identifying the modulation must be running at the receiver end. In this paper, a new algorithm has been developed for the said purpose, termed as ´histogram-count modulation identification´. In the algorithm, the modulating parameters are considered as the identification parameters for fourteen digital modulation techniques. First we plot the histogram of the respective modulation parameters, which gives us the number of occurrences of that parameter. Consequently, considering the counts, the digital modulation technique is identified for demodulation