In recent years, wireless-based fingerprint positioning has attracted increasing research attention owing to its position-related features and applications in the Internet of Things (IoT). In this paper, by leveraging long-term evolution (LTE) signals, a novel deep-learning-based fingerprint positioning approach is proposed to solve the problem of outdoor positioning. Considering the outstanding performance of deep learning in image classification, LTE signal measurements are converted into location grayscale images to form a fingerprint database. In order to deal with the instability of LTE signals, prevent the gradient dispersion problem, and increase the robustness of the proposed deep neural network (DNN), the following methods are adopted: First, cross-entropy is used as the loss function of the DNN. Second, the learning rate of the proposed DNN is dynamically adjusted. Third, this paper adopted several data enhancement techniques. To find the best positioning fingerprint and method, three types of fingerprint and five positioning models are compared. Finally, by using a deep residual network (Resnet) and transfer learning, a hierarchical structure training method is proposed. The proposed Resnet is used to train with the united fingerprint image database to obtain a positioning model called a coarse localizer. By using the prior knowledge of the pretrained Resnet, feed-forward neural network (FFNN)-based transfer learning is used to train with the united fingerprint database to obtain a better positioning model, called a fine localizer. The experimental results convincingly show that the proposed DNN can automatically learn the location features of LTE signals and achieve satisfactory positioning accuracy in outdoor environments.

Specific transmitter identification (SEI) is a technology that uses a received signal to identify to which individual radiation source the transmitted signal belongs. It can complete the identification of the signal transmitter in a non-cooperative scenario. Therefore, there are broad application prospects in the field of wireless-communication-network security, spectral resource management, and military battlefield-target communication countermeasures. This article demodulates and reconstructs a digital modulation signal to obtain a signal without modulator distortion and power-amplifier nonlinearity. Comparing the reconstructed signal with the actual received signal, the coefficient representation of the nonlinearity of the power amplifier and the distortion of the modulator can be obtained, and these coefficients can be used as the fingerprint characteristics of different transmitters through a convolutional neural network (CNN) to complete the identification of specific transmitters. The existing SEI strategy for changing the modulation parameters of a test signal is to mix part of the test signal with the training signal so that the classifier can learn the signal of which the modulation parameter was changed. This method is still data-oriented and cannot process signals for which the classifier has not been trained. It has certain limitations in practical applications. We compared the fingerprint features extracted by the method in this study with the fingerprint features extracted by the bispectral method. When SNR < 20 dB, the recognition accuracy of the bispectral method dropped rapidly. The method in this paper still achieved 86% recognition accuracy when SNR = 0 dB. When the carrier frequency of the test signal was changed, the bispectral feature failed, and the proposed method could still achieve a recognition accuracy of about 70%. When changing the test-signal baud rate, the proposed method could still achieve a classification accuracy rate of more than 70% for four different individual radiation sources when SNR = 0 dB.

Specific emitter identification involves extracting the fingerprint features that represent the individual differences of the emitter through processing the received signals. By identifying the extracted fingerprint features, one can also identify the emitter to which the received signals belong. Due to differences in transmitter hardware, this fingerprint cannot be duplicated. Therefore, SEI plays an important role in the field of information security and can reduce the information leakages caused by key theft. This method can also be used in the military field to support communication countermeasures via emitter individual identification. In this paper, empirical mode decomposition is carried out for each radar pulse signal, and then the bispectral features are extracted. Dimensionality reduction is carried out according to the symmetry of the bispectral features. The features after dimensionality reduction are input into a one-dimensional LeNet neural network as the fingerprint features of the emitter, and the identification of 10 radar emitter sources is completed. Based on the verification of real signals, the SEI identification strategy in this paper achieved a recognition rate of 96.4% for 10 radar signals, 98.9% for 10 data emitter signals, and 88.93% for 5 communication radio signals.

In this paper, we present a novel signal sorting method aimed at reducing the impact of interference and noise while achieving blind detection and accurate sorting of a variable-speed frequency-hopping communication system. To achieve this, we combine spectrogram analysis with an innovative sorting approach. First, we generate the spectrogram of the received signal, and then employ a morphology filter to effectively eliminate noise and sweep frequency interference from the spectrogram. Subsequently, we identify and mark connected domains in the spectrogram, from which we extract the duration data to create a dataset specifically for separating fixed-frequency interference. Furthermore, we propose a specialized time alignment algorithm designed to accommodate the unique characteristics of variable-speed frequency-hopping signals, enabling precise sorting of variable-speed frequency-hopping signals. Through rigorous comparative evaluations against existing algorithms, we demonstrate that our proposed approach provides superior accuracy by offering a clearer representation of the time–frequency situation of the received signals. The proposed method provides a high correct sorting probability which is equal to 0.8 when signal-to-noise ratio is 0 dB and reaches 1 when signal-to-noise ratio reaches over 12 dB. In comparison, the correct sorting probability of the comparison algorithm is far inferior to the proposed algorithm.

This paper considers the problem of estimating the parameters of a frequency-hopping signal under non-cooperative conditions. To make the estimation of different parameters independently of each other, a compressed domain frequency-hopping signal parameter estimation algorithm based on the improved atomic dictionary is proposed. By segmenting and compressive sampling the received signal, the center frequency of each signal segment is estimated using the maximum dot product. The signal segments are processed with central frequency variation using the improved atomic dictionary to accurately estimate the hopping time. We highlight that one superiority of the proposed algorithm is that high-resolution center frequency estimation can be directly obtained without reconstructing the frequency-hopping signal. Additionally, another superiority of the proposed algorithm is that hopping time estimation has nothing to do with center frequency estimation. Numerical results show that the proposed algorithm can achieve superior performance compared with the competing method.

This work improves a LeNet model algorithm based on a signal’s bispectral features to recognize the communication behaviors of a non-collaborative short-wave radio station. At first, the mapping relationships between the burst waveforms and the communication behaviors of a radio station are analyzed. Then, bispectral features of simulated behavior signals are obtained as the input of the network. With regard to the recognition neural network, the structure of LeNet and the size of the convolutional kernel in LeNet are optimized. Finally, the five types of communication behavior are recognized by using the improved bispectral estimation matrix of signals and the ameliorated LeNet. The experimental results show that when the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) values are 8, 10, or 15 dB, the recognition accuracy values of the improved algorithm reach 81.5%, 94.5%, and 99.3%, respectively. Compared with other algorithms, the training time cost and recognition accuracy of the proposed algorithm are lower and higher, respectively; thus, the proposed algorithm is of great practical value.