SYMMeTRy: Exploiting MIMO Self-Similarity for Under-Determined Modulation Recognition

Modulation recognition (modrec) seeks to identify the modulation of a transmitter from coresponding spectrum scans. It is an essential functional component of future spectrum sensing with critical applications in dynamic spectrum access and spectrum enforcement. While predominantly studied in single-input single-output (SISO) systems, practical modrec for multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communications requires more research attention. Existing MIMO modrec impose stringent requirements of fully- or over-determined sensing front-end, i.e. the number of sensor antennas should exceed that at the transmitter. This poses a prohibitive sensor cost even for simple 2x2 MIMO systems and will severely hamper progress in flexible spectrum access. We design a MIMO modrec framework that enables efficient and cost-effective modulation classification for under-determined settings involving fewer sensor antennas than those used for transmission. Our key idea is to exploit the inherent multi-scale self-similarity of MIMO modulation IQ constellations, which persists in under-determined settings. Our framework, called SYMMeTRy (Self-similaritY for MIMO ModulaTion Recognition), designs domain-aware classification features with high discriminative potential by summarizing regularities of symbol co-location in the MIMO constellation. To this end, we summarize the fractal geometry of observed samples to extract discriminative features for supervised MIMO modrec. We evaluate SYMMeTRy in a realistic simulation and in a small-scale MIMO testbed. We demonstrate that it maintains high and consistent performance across various noise regimes, channel fading conditions and with increasing MIMO transmitter complexity. Our efforts highlight SYMMeTRy's high potential to enable efficient and practical MIMO modrec in spectrum sensing infrastructures with mixed-complexity sensors.