Revolution of Wireless Signal Recognition for 6G: Recent Advances, Challenges and Future Directions

Wireless signal recognition (WSR) is a crucial technique for intelligent communications and spectrum sharing in the next six-generation (6G) wireless communication networks. It can be utilized to enhance network performance and efficiency, improve quality of service (QoS), and improve network security and reliability. Additionally, WSR can be applied for military applications such as signal interception, signal race, and signal abduction. In the past decades, great efforts have been made for the research of WSR. Earlier works mainly focus on model-based methods, including likelihood-based (LB) and feature-based (FB) methods, which have taken the leading position for many years. With the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI), intelligent methods including machine learning-based (ML-based) and deep learning-based (DL-based) methods have been developed to extract the features of the received signals and perform the classification. In this work, we provide a comprehensive review of WSR from the view of applications, main tasks, recent advances, datasets and evaluation metrics, challenges, and future directions. Specifically, intelligent WSR methods are introduced from the perspective of model, data, learning and implementation. Moreover, we analyze the challenges for WSR from the view of complex, dynamic, and open 6G wireless environments and discuss the future directions for WSR. This survey is expected to provide a comprehensive overview of the state-of-the-art WSR techniques and inspire new research directions for WSR in 6G networks.

UAV Cognitive Semantic Communications Enabled by Knowledge Graph for Robust Object Detection

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are widely used for object detection. However, the existing UAV-based object detection systems are subject to severe challenges, namely, their limited computation, energy and communication resources, which limits the achievable detection performance. To overcome these challenges, a UAV cognitive semantic communication system is proposed by exploiting a knowledge graph. Moreover, we design a multi-scale codec for semantic compression to reduce data transmission volume while guaranteeing detection performance. Considering the complexity and dynamicity of UAV communication scenarios, a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) adaptive module with robust channel adaptation capability is introduced. Furthermore, an object detection scheme is proposed by exploiting the knowledge graph to overcome channel noise interference and compression distortion. Simulation results conducted on the practical aerial image dataset demonstrate that our proposed semantic communication system outperforms benchmark systems in terms of detection accuracy, communication robustness, and computation efficiency, especially in dealing with low bandwidth compression ratios and low SNR regimes.

Pruned Convolutional Attention Network Based Wideband Spectrum Sensing with Sub-Nyquist Sampling

Wideband spectrum sensing (WSS) is critical for orchestrating multitudinous wireless transmissions via spectrum sharing, but may incur excessive costs of hardware, power and computation due to the high sampling rate. In this article, a deep learning based WSS framework embedding the multicoset preprocessing is proposed to enable the low-cost sub-Nyquist sampling. A pruned convolutional attention WSS network (PCA-WSSNet) is designed to organically integrate the multicoset preprocessing and the convolutional attention mechanism as well as to reduce the model complexity remarkably via the selective weight pruning without the performance loss. Furthermore, a transfer learning (TL) strategy benefiting from the model pruning is developed to improve the robustness of PCA-WSSNet with few adaptation samples of new scenarios. Simulation results show the performance superiority of PCA-WSSNet over the state of the art. Compared with direct TL, the pruned TL strategy can simultaneously improve the prediction accuracy in unseen scenarios, reduce the model size, and accelerate the model inference.

IRS-Enhanced Secure Semantic Communication Networks: Cross-Layer and Context-Awared Resource Allocation

Learning-task oriented semantic communication is pivotal in optimizing transmission efficiency by extracting and conveying essential semantics tailored to specific tasks, such as image reconstruction and classification. Nevertheless, the challenge of eavesdropping poses a formidable threat to semantic privacy due to the open nature of wireless communications. In this paper, intelligent reflective surface (IRS)-enhanced secure semantic communication (IRS-SSC) is proposed to guarantee the physical layer security from a task-oriented semantic perspective. Specifically, a multi-layer codebook is exploited to discretize continuous semantic features and describe semantics with different numbers of bits, thereby meeting the need for hierarchical semantic representation and further enhancing the transmission efficiency. Novel semantic security metrics, i.e., secure semantic rate (S-SR) and secure semantic spectrum efficiency (S-SSE), are defined to map the task-oriented security requirements at the application layer into the physical layer. To achieve artificial intelligence (AI)-native secure communication, we propose a noise disturbance enhanced hybrid deep reinforcement learning (NdeHDRL)-based resource allocation scheme. This scheme dynamically maximizes the S-SSE by jointly optimizing the bits for semantic representations, reflective coefficients of the IRS, and the subchannel assignment. Moreover, we propose a novel semantic context awared state space (SCA-SS) to fusion the high-dimensional semantic space and the observable system state space, which enables the agent to perceive semantic context and solves the dimensional catastrophe problem. Simulation results demonstrate the efficiency of our proposed schemes in both enhancing the security performance and the S-SSE compared to several benchmark schemes.

Information Importance-Aware Defense against Adversarial Attack for Automatic Modulation Classification:An XAI-Based Approach

Deep learning (DL) has significantly improved automatic modulation classification (AMC) by leveraging neural networks as the feature extractor.However, as the DL-based AMC becomes increasingly widespread, it is faced with the severe secure issue from various adversarial attacks. Existing defense methods often suffer from the high computational cost, intractable parameter tuning, and insufficient robustness.This paper proposes an eXplainable artificial intelligence (XAI) defense approach, which uncovers the negative information caused by the adversarial attack through measuring the importance of input features based on the SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP).By properly removing the negative information in adversarial samples and then fine-tuning(FT) the model, the impact of the attacks on the classification result can be mitigated.Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed SHAP-FT improves the classification performance of the model by 15%-20% under different attack levels,which not only enhances model robustness against various attack levels but also reduces the resource consumption, validating its effectiveness in safeguarding communication networks.

FSOS-AMC: Few-Shot Open-Set Learning for Automatic Modulation Classification

Automatic modulation classification (AMC) is essential for the advancement and efficiency of future wireless communication networks. Deep learning (DL)-based AMC frameworks have garnered extensive attention for their impressive classification performance. However, existing DL-based AMC frameworks rely on two assumptions, large-scale training data and the same class pool between the training and testing data, which are not suitable for \emph{few-shot and open-set} scenarios. To address this issue, a novel few-shot open-set automatic modulation classification (FSOS-AMC) framework is proposed by exploiting a multi-scale attention network, meta-prototype training, and a modular open-set classifier. The multi-scale attention network is used to extract the features from the input signal, the meta-prototype training is adopted to train the feature extractor and the modular open-set classifier can be utilized to classify the testing data into one of the known modulations or potential unknown modulations. Extensive simulation results demonstrate that the proposed FSOS-AMC framework can achieve higher classification accuracy than the state-of-the-art methods for known modulations and unknown modulations in terms of accuracy and area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC). Moreover, the performance of the proposed FSOS-AMC framework under low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) conditions is much better than the compared schemes.

Collaborative Automatic Modulation Classification via Deep Edge Inference for Hierarchical Cognitive Radio Networks

In hierarchical cognitive radio networks, edge or cloud servers utilize the data collected by edge devices for modulation classification, which, however, is faced with problems of the transmission overhead, data privacy, and computation load. In this article, an edge learning (EL) based framework jointly mobilizing the edge device and the edge server for intelligent co-inference is proposed to realize the collaborative automatic modulation classification (C-AMC) between them. A spectrum semantic compression neural network (SSCNet) with the lightweight structure is designed for the edge device to compress the collected raw data into a compact semantic message that is then sent to the edge server via the wireless channel. On the edge server side, a modulation classification neural network (MCNet) combining bidirectional long short-term memory (Bi?LSTM) and multi-head attention layers is elaborated to deter?mine the modulation type from the noisy semantic message. By leveraging the computation resources of both the edge device and the edge server, high transmission overhead and risks of data privacy leakage are avoided. The simulation results verify the effectiveness of the proposed C-AMC framework, significantly reducing the model size and computational complexity.

Federated Transfer Learning Based Cooperative Wideband Spectrum Sensing with Model Pruning

For ultra-wideband and high-rate wireless communication systems, wideband spectrum sensing (WSS) is critical, since it empowers secondary users (SUs) to capture the spectrum holes for opportunistic transmission. However, WSS encounters challenges such as excessive costs of hardware and computation due to the high sampling rate, as well as robustness issues arising from scenario mismatch. In this paper, a WSS neural network (WSSNet) is proposed by exploiting multicoset preprocessing to enable the sub-Nyquist sampling, with the two dimensional convolution design specifically tailored to work with the preprocessed samples. A federated transfer learning (FTL) based framework mobilizing multiple SUs is further developed to achieve a robust model adaptable to various scenarios, which is paved by the selective weight pruning for the fast model adaptation and inference. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed FTL-WSSNet achieves the fairly good performance in different target scenarios even without local adaptation samples.

Edge Learning Based Collaborative Automatic Modulation Classification for Hierarchical Cognitive Radio Networks

In hierarchical cognitive radio networks, edge or cloud servers utilize the data collected by edge devices for modulation classification, which, however, is faced with problems of the computation load, transmission overhead, and data privacy. In this article, an edge learning (EL) based framework jointly mobilizing the edge device and the edge server for intelligent co-inference is proposed to realize the collaborative automatic modulation classification (C-AMC) between them. A spectrum semantic compression neural network is designed for the edge device to compress the collected raw data into a compact semantic embedding that is then sent to the edge server via the wireless channel. On the edge server side, a modulation classification neural network combining the bidirectional long-short term memory and attention structures is elaborated to determine the modulation type from the noisy semantic embedding. The C-AMC framework decently balances the computation resources of both sides while avoiding the high transmission overhead and data privacy leakage. Both the offline and online training procedures of the C-AMC framework are elaborated. The compression strategy of the C-AMC framework is also developed to further facilitate the deployment, especially for the resource-constrained edge device. Simulation results show the superiority of the EL-based C-AMC framework in terms of the classification accuracy, computational complexity, and the data compression rate as well as reveal useful insights paving the practical implementation.

Cooperative Cognitive Dynamic System in UAV Swarms: Reconfigurable Mechanism and Framework

As the demands for immediate and effective responses increase in both civilian and military domains, the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarms emerge as effective solutions, in which multiple cooperative UAVs can work together to achieve specific goals. However, how to manage such complex systems to ensure real-time adaptability lack sufficient researches. Hence, in this paper, we propose the cooperative cognitive dynamic system (CCDS), to optimize the management for UAV swarms. CCDS leverages a hierarchical and cooperative control structure that enables real-time data processing and decision. Accordingly, CCDS optimizes the UAV swarm management via dynamic reconfigurability and adaptive intelligent optimization. In addition, CCDS can be integrated with the biomimetic mechanism to efficiently allocate tasks for UAV swarms. Further, the distributed coordination of CCDS ensures reliable and resilient control, thus enhancing the adaptability and robustness. Finally, the potential challenges and future directions are analyzed, to provide insights into managing UAV swarms in dynamic heterogeneous networking.