Autonomous radar pulse modulation classification using modulation components analysis

An autonomous method for recognizing radar pulse modulations based on modulation components analysis is introduced in this paper. Unlike the conventional automatic modulation classification methods which extract modulation features based on a list of known patterns, this proposed method classifies modulations by the existence of basic modulation components including continuous frequency modulations, discrete frequency codes and discrete phase codes in an autonomous way. A feasible way to realize this method is using the features of abrupt changes in the instantaneous frequency rate curve which derived by the short-term general representation of phase derivative. This method is suitable not only for the basic radar modulations but also for complicated and hybrid modulations. The theoretical result and two experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.