SAT02-2: Modulation Classification of MPSK for Space Applications

Space missions are being developed with increasing levels of autonomy, as a means to increase their science return, fault-tolerance, and longevity. In this paper, we present NASA´s low-complexity techniques to autonomously identify the modulation order of an M-ary phase-shift-keying signal in the presence of additive white Gaussian noise. This is part of a larger program to develop an autonomous radio that receives a signal without a priori knowledge of its modulation type, modulation index, data rate, and pulse shape. For classification between binary and quaternary phase-shift keying, these techniques represent a lopsided trade-off in which a factor of 100 reduction in complexity results in less than a 0.2 dB loss in performance relative to the maximum likelihood modulation classifier.