A novel algorithm for blind recognition of M-ary frequency shift keying modulation

In this paper, first-order cyclostationarity of M-ary frequency shift keying (M-FSK) signals affected by additive Gaussian noise, phase, frequency offset and timing errors is investigated, and applied for modulation order recognition. A novel recognition algorithm is proposed, which employs the number of first-order cycle frequencies (CFs) of the received signal as a discriminating feature. The algorithm has the advantage that it requires neither symbol timing and carrier recovery, nor estimation of signal and noise powers as preprocessing tasks. Simulations are carried out to confirm theoretical developments.