Call for Papers

“Battle of the ModRecs” is a live competition-like event. A single open-air transmit system based on, but not identical to, the Entrance Hurdles for the DARPA Spectrum Collaboration Challenge (https://spectrumcollaborationchallenge.com/documents/) will be set up to generate and cycle through various modulations. Each participant will set up their system to receive the signals over the air and perform their modulation recognition (“ModRec”) algorithms. The Battle of the ModRecs seeks to explore the field of modulation recognition to better understand how to approach these problems and, most importantly, to compare results.

The Battle is separated into a workshop and a live over-the-air event. The workshop will take place during the DySPAN workshop day of March 6. The Battle will take place between March 7 and 8 during the technical conference. During conference hours, the transmitter will operate on a pre-set frequency and bandwidth which will be dictated by an experimental FCC license. The competition signal generator will transmit certain types of modulated signals among a frequency-time grid with defined channel bandwidths and time slot durations. Battle participants will capture the signals and identify the modulation for as many signals as possible in the established grid. A simplified example of the grid is shown below.

 

Chan 0

Chan 1

Chan 2

Chan 3

Chan 4

Time 0

A

D

E

-

B

Time 1

B

B

A

-

B

Time 2

C

C

A

C

A

Time 3

D

A

C

C

B


During the two days of the battle, specific periods of time will be set aside for scoring portions. Other times are provided for training, experimentation, and development. At the conclusion of the battle, each team will submit their results, similar to those pictured here. The file format specifications are to be disclosed at a later date.

Battle of the ModRecs Specifications:

See below for a list of parameters bounding the Battle of the ModRecs:

  • The instantaneous bandwidth is anticipated to be on the order of 10 MHz
  • The center frequency will be between 1 GHz and 6 GHz
  • Scoring channel resolution (e.g., the columns in the above example) will be on the order of 20 KHz per channel
  • Each scoring timeslot will be on the order of 100 ms
  • Signals may be present for a portion of a timeslot or may span multiple timeslots
  • Signals may be continuous or bursty in nature
  • Bursty signals will have a minimum burst length on the order of 100 symbols
  • Signal bursts will have a rectangular, raised cosine, or root raised cosine pulse shape applied to them
  • Signals may occupy a portion of a frequency bin or may span multiple frequency bins
  • While a “narrowband” signal may overlap a wider signal, there will always be a guard band between signals directly adjacent in frequency
  • Signals will be transmitted at a variety of signal power levels
  • There will be on the order of 20 different modulation types chosen from those in Table 1
  • A given modulation may appear more than once in the event, potentially with different parameters (including but not limited to pulse shape, duration, symbol rate, and SNR)
  • As signals will be transmitted over the air, all signals will be subject to channel effects and RF hardware impairments
  • Specifics of time/frequency synchronization are to be disclosed at a later date

Table 1 : Battle of the ModRecs Potential Modulations

Data Type

Modulation Class

Modulation

Analog

AM

AM-SSB-WC

AM-SSB-SC

AM-DSB-WC

AM-DSB-SC

AM-VSB

FM

FM

Digital

FSK

2-FSK

4-FSK

8-FSK

MSK

GMSK

PSK

BPSK

QPSK

OQPSK

8PSK

16PSK

32PSK

APSK

16APSK

32APSK

64APSK

128APSK

QAM

16-QAM

32-QAM

64-QAM

128-QAM

256-QAM

ASK

OOK

4-ASK

8-ASK

Spread Spectrum

DSS

FHSS


Participation in the battle is contingent upon submitting a paper and having it successfully reviewed and accepted to the workshop. The paper should describe the approach to modulation recognition which will be used by the team during the battle. Please follow the DySPAN paper submission format for demo papers (3 pages) and the deadlines posted below:

  • Paper submission deadline (via EDAS): January 20, 2017
  • Notification of acceptance: February 8, 2017
  • Camera-ready deadline: February 15, 2017
  • Workshop: March 6, 2017
  • Battle: March 7 – 8, 2017