Deep Learning-based Modulation Classification of Practical OFDM Signals for Spectrum Sensing

TL;DR

This paper presents a deep learning approach for classifying OFDM modulation schemes in practical Wi-Fi 6 and 5G signals, using a CNN-based classifier that operates without protocol-specific prior knowledge and achieves high accuracy.

Contribution

It introduces a novel feature extraction method and CNN classifier capable of classifying OFDM signals in real-world conditions without protocol-specific information.

Findings

Achieves at least 97% accuracy on OTA data at sufficient SNR.

Effectively estimates OFDM parameters for classification.

Operates reliably on synthetic and real-world datasets.

Abstract

In this study, the modulation of symbols on OFDM subcarriers is classified for transmissions following Wi-Fi~6 and 5G downlink specifications. First, our approach estimates the OFDM symbol duration and cyclic prefix length based on the cyclic autocorrelation function. We propose a feature extraction algorithm characterizing the modulation of OFDM signals, which includes removing the effects of a synchronization error. The obtained feature is converted into a 2D histogram of phase and amplitude and this histogram is taken as input to a convolutional neural network (CNN)-based classifier. The classifier does not require prior knowledge of protocol-specific information such as Wi-Fi preamble or resource allocation of 5G physical channels. The classifier's performance, evaluated using synthetic and real-world measured over-the-air (OTA) datasets, achieves a minimum accuracy of 97\% accuracy with OTA data when SNR is above the value required for data transmission.