Automatic modulation recognition (AMR) is a critical technology in spatial cognitive radio (SCR), and building high-performance AMR model can achieve high classification accuracy of signals. AMR is a classification problem essentially, and deep learning has achieved excellent performance in various classification tasks. In recent years, joint recognition of multiple networks has become increasingly popular. In complex wireless environments, there are multiple signal types and diversity of characteristics between different signals. Also, the existence of multiple interference in wireless environment makes the signal characteristics more complex. It is difficult for a single network to accurately extract the unique features of all signals and achieve accurate classification. So, this article proposes a time–frequency domain joint recognition model that combines two deep learning networks (DLNs), to achieve higher accuracy AMR. A DLN named MCLDNN (multi-channel convolutional long short-term deep neural network) is trained on samples composed of in-phase and quadrature component (IQ) signals, to distinguish modulation modes that are relatively easy to identify. This paper proposes a BiGRU3 (three-layer bidirectional gated recurrent unit) network based on FFT as the second DLN. For signals with significant similarity in the time domain and significant differences in the frequency domain that are difficult to distinguish by the former DLN, such as AM-DSB and WBFM, FFT (Fast Fourier Transform) is used to obtain frequency domain amplitude and phase (FDAP) information. Experiments have shown that the BiGUR3 network has superior extraction performance for amplitude spectrum and phase spectrum features. Experiments are conducted on two publicly available datasets, the RML2016.10a and RML2016.10b, and the results show that the overall recognition accuracy of the proposed joint model reaches 94.94% and 96.69%, respectively. Compared to a single network, the recognition accuracy is significantly improved. At the same time, the recognition accuracy of AM-DSB and WBFM signals has been improved by 17% and 18.2%, respectively.

Radio signals are polluted by noise in the process of channel transmission, which will lead to signal distortion. Noise reduction of radio signals is an effective means to eliminate the impact of noise. Using deep learning (DL) to denoise signals can reduce the dependence on artificial domain knowledge, while traditional signal-processing-based denoising methods often require knowledge of the artificial domain. Aiming at the problem of noise reduction of radio communication signals, a radio communication signal denoising method based on the relativistic average generative adversarial networks (RaGAN) is proposed in this paper. This method combines the bidirectional long short-term memory (Bi-LSTM) model, which is good at processing time-series data with RaGAN, and uses the weighted loss function to construct a noise reduction model suitable for radio communication signals, which realizes the end-to-end denoising of radio signals. The experimental results show that, compared with the existing methods, the proposed algorithm has significantly improved the noise reduction effect. In the case of a low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), the signal modulation recognition accuracy is improved by about 10% after noise reduction.

Automatic modulation recognition (AMR) plays an essential role in modern communication systems. In recent years, various modulation recognition algorithms based on deep learning have been emerging, but the problem of low recognition accuracy has not been solved well. To solve this problem, based on the existing MCLDNN algorithm, in this paper, we proposed an improved spatiotemporal multi-channel network (IQ-related features Multi-channel Convolutional Bi-LSTM with Gaussian noise, IQGMCL). Firstly, dividing the input IQ signals into three channels, time sequence feature extraction is carried out for route I, route Q, and route IQ, respectively. For route IQ, convolution kernel (2,1) is first used to extract relevant features. Two layers of the small convolution kernel (1,3) are used to extract time sequence features further, and the three channels are used to extract features further. Then, a two-layer short-length memory network is used to extract features from time and space more effectively. Through comparison experiments, Bi-LSTM is introduced to replace one layer of LSTM, and a fully connected layer is removed to prevent overfitting. Finally, multiplicative Gaussian noise is introduced to naturally corrode the feature parameters, further improving the robustness and accuracy of the model. Experiments are carried out on three public datasets RML2016.10a, RML2016.10b, and RML2016.04C. The experiments show that the IQGMCL network has higher recognition accuracies on all datasets, especially on the RML2016.10a dataset. When the SNR is 4 dB, the recognition accuracy reaches 93.52%. When the SNR is greater than 0 dB, the average recognition accuracy reaches 92.3%, 1.31%, and 1.2% higher than the original MCLDNN network, respectively.

Radio frequency (RF) fingerprinting, as an emerging physical layer security technology, demonstrates significant potential in the field of Internet of Things (IoT) security. However, most existing methods operate under a ‘closed-set’ assumption, failing to effectively address the continuous emergence of unknown devices in real-world scenarios. To tackle this challenge, this paper proposes an open-set radio frequency fingerprint identification (RFFI) method based on Multi-Task Prototype Learning (MTPL). The core of this method is a multi-task learning framework that simultaneously performs discriminative classification, generative reconstruction, and prototype clustering tasks through a deep network that integrates an encoder, a decoder, and a classifier. Specifically, the classification task aims to learn discriminative features with class separability, the generative reconstruction task aims to preserve intrinsic signal characteristics and enhance detection capability for out-of-distribution samples, and the prototype clustering task aims to promote compact intra-class distributions for known classes by minimizing the distance between samples and their class prototypes. This synergistic multi-task optimization mechanism effectively shapes a feature space highly conducive to open-set recognition. After training, instead of relying on direct classifier outputs, we propose to adopt extreme value theory (EVT) to statistically model the tail distribution of the minimum distances between known class samples and their prototypes, thereby adaptively determining a robust open-set discrimination threshold. Comprehensive experiments on a real-world dataset with 16 Wi-Fi devices show that the proposed method outperforms five mainstream open-set recognition methods, including SoftMax thresholding, OpenMax, and MLOSR, achieving a mean AUROC of 0.9918. This result is approximately 1.7 percentage points higher than the second-best method, demonstrating the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed approach for building secure and robust wireless authentication systems. This validates the effectiveness and superiority of our approach in building secure and robust wireless authentication systems.

This paper proposes a hybrid feature extraction convolutional neural network combined with a channel attention mechanism (HFECNET-CA) for automatic modulation recognition (AMR). Firstly, we designed a hybrid feature extraction backbone network. Three different forms of convolution kernels were used to extract features from the original I/Q sequence on three branches, respectively, learn the spatiotemporal features of the original signal from different “perspectives” through the convolution kernels with different shapes, and perform channel fusion on the output feature maps of the three branches to obtain a multi-domain mixed feature map. Then, the deep features of the signal are extracted by connecting multiple convolution layers in the time domain. Secondly, a plug-and-play channel attention module is constructed, which can be embedded into any feature extraction layer to give higher weight to the more valuable channels in the output feature map to achieve the purpose of feature correction for the output feature map. The experimental results on the RadiomL2016.10A dataset show that the designed HFECNET-CA has higher recognition accuracy and fewer trainable parameters compared to other networks. Under 20 SNRs, the average recognition accuracy reached 63.92%, and the highest recognition accuracy reached 93.64%.

Automatic Modulation Recognition (AMR) is a key technology in the field of cognitive communication, playing a core role in many applications, especially in wireless security issues. Currently, deep learning (DL)-based AMR technology has achieved many research results, greatly promoting the development of AMR technology. However, the few-shot dilemma faced by DL-based AMR methods greatly limits their application in practical scenarios. Therefore, this paper endeavored to address the challenge of AMR with limited data and proposed a novel meta-learning method, the Multi-Level Comparison Relation Network with Class Reconstruction (MCRN-CR). Firstly, the method designs a structure of a multi-level comparison relation network, which involves embedding functions to output their feature maps hierarchically, comprehensively calculating the relation scores between query samples and support samples to determine the modulation category. Secondly, the embedding function integrates a reconstruction module, leveraging an autoencoder for support sample reconstruction, wherein the encoder serves dual purposes as the embedding mechanism. The training regimen incorporates a meta-learning paradigm, harmoniously combining classification and reconstruction losses to refine the model’s performance. The experimental results on the RadioML2018 dataset show that our designed method can greatly alleviate the small sample problem in AMR and is superior to existing methods.