Detection of multicarrier modulations using 4th-order cumulants

Abstract

This paper deals with modulation classification. Our goal is to discriminate single-carrier (SC) modulations from multicarrier (MC) modulations of OFDM type. Because MC modulations are asymptotically Gaussian, we propose here a detector using the statistical test of Giannakis and Tsatsanis (1990) based on fourth-order cumulants. This test is here adapted to the specific case of digital modulations which allows one to reduce the algorithm complexity. Simulations are provided and show that in the worst case (filtered 256-QAM versus 32-OFDM) the detector achieves a probability of detection Pd=0.99 for a probability of false alarm Pfa=10/sup -2/.