Digital modulation classification under non-Gaussian noise using sparse signal decomposition and maximum likelihood

In recent years, automatic signal detection and modulation classification play a vital role in the field of cognitive radio applications. The majority of the existing signals detection and classification methods assume that the received signal is contaminated by additive white Gaussian noise. Under impulsive noise condition, the performance of the traditional modulation classification methods may be degraded. Therefore, in this paper, we investigate the application of sparse signal decomposition using an overcomplete dictionary for detection and classification of digital modulation signals. The overcomplete hybrid dictionary consists of impulse waveform and sine and cosine waveform for effectively capturing morphological components of the impulse noise and deterministic modulated signals. The proposed modulation classification method includes the following steps: sparse signal decomposition (SSD) on hybrid dictionaries, modulated signal extraction, matched filtering, and maximum likelihood (ML) classification. The performance of the direct ML and SSD-based ML classification methods are tested and validated using different modulation techniques under different Gaussian and impulse noise conditions. The proposed system achieves a classification accuracy of 89 percent at 0 dB SNR and hence outperforms the direct ML method.