Pulse Repetition Interval Modulation Classification using Machine Learning

Abstract: Radar signals are used for estimating location, speed and direction of an object. Some radars emit pulses, while others emit a continuous wave. Both types of radars emit signals according to some pattern; a pulse radar, for example, emits pulses with a specific time interval between pulses. This time interval may either be stable, change linearly, or follow some other pattern. The interval between two emitted pulses is often referred to as the pulse repetition interval (PRI), and the pattern that defines the PRI is often referred to as the modulation. Classifying which PRI modulation is used in a radar signal is a crucial component for the task of identifying who is emitting the signal. Incorrectly classifying the used modulation can lead to an incorrect guess of the identity of the agent emitting the signal, and can as a consequence be fatal. This work investigates how a long short-term memory (LSTM) neural network performs compared to a state of the art feature extraction neural network (FE-MLP) approach for the task of classifying PRI modulation. The results indicate that the proposed LSTM model performs consistently better than the FE-MLP approach across all tested noise levels. The downside of the proposed LSTM model is that it is significantly more complex than the FE-MLP approach. Future work could investigate if the LSTM model is too complex to use in a real world setting where computing power may be limited. Additionally, the LSTM model can, in a trivial manner, be modified to support more modulations than those tested in this work. Hence, future work could also evaluate how the proposed LSTM model performs when support for more modulations is added.