Time frequency and Kalman filter based baud rate estimator

With the rising number of modulation types used in multiuser communication systems, we need to find efficient methods to discriminate them. Indeed, modulation recognition has become important in wireless communications for both civilian and military applications. Traditionally, to classify modulation types, most studies assume abundant a priori knowledge about modulated signals such as binary data rate, baud rate or carrier frequency. However, new transmission receiver systems need to classify automatically digital modulations without specific information. In the course of making decision on modulation type, these parameters may have to be estimated in order to perform efficient demodulation. This paper proposes a new way of estimating baud rate of digital modulated signals. This approach is based on abrupt changes detection in time-frequency plane and on abrupt change periodicity analysis using Kalman filtering.