Intelligent Radio Signal Processing: A Survey

Intelligent signal processing for wireless communications is a vital task in modern wireless systems, but it faces new challenges because of network heterogeneity, diverse service requirements, a massive number of connections, and various radio characteristics. Owing to recent advancements in big data and computing technologies, artificial intelligence (AI) has become a useful tool for radio signal processing and has enabled the realization of intelligent radio signal processing . This survey covers four intelligent signal processing topics for the wireless physical layer, including modulation classification, signal detection, beamforming, and channel estimation. In particular, each theme is presented in a dedicated section, starting with the most fundamental principles, followed by a review of up-to-date studies and a summary. To provide the necessary background, we first present a brief overview of AI techniques such as machine learning, deep learning, and federated learning. Finally, we highlight a number of research challenges and future directions in the area of intelligent radio signal processing. We expect this survey to be a good source of information for anyone interested in intelligent radio signal processing, and the perspectives we provide therein will stimulate many more novel ideas and contributions in the future.