# A Challenge for the Machine Learners

A while back I was working with some machine-learning researchers on the problem of carrier-frequency-offset (CFO) estimation. The CFO is the residual carrier frequency exhibited by an imperfectly downconverted radio-frequency signal. I’ll describe it in more detail below. The idea behind the collaboration was to find the SNR, SINR, block-length, etc., ranges for which machine-learning algorithms outperform more traditional approaches, such as those involving exploitation of cyclostationarity. If we’re going to get rid of the feature-based approaches used by experts, then we’d better make sure that the machines can do at least as well as those approaches for the problems typically considered by the experts.

# Can a Machine Learn the Fourier Transform?

Update: See Part 2 of this post at this link. If you want to leave on comment, leave it on Part 2. Comments closed on this Part 1 post.

# More on Pure and Impure Sine Waves

Remember when we derived the cumulant as the solution to the pure $n$th-order sine-wave problem? It sounded good at the time, I hope. But here I describe a curious special case where the interpretation of the cumulant as the pure component of a nonlinearly generated sine wave seems to break down.

# Cumulant (4, 2) is a Good Discriminator?

Let’s talk about another published paper on signal detection involving cyclostationarity and/or cumulants. This one is called “Energy-Efficient Processor for Blind Signal Classification in Cognitive Radio Networks,” (The Literature [R69]), and is authored by UCLA researchers E. Rebeiz and four colleagues.

My focus on this paper it its idea that broad signal-type classes, such as direct-sequence spread-spectrum (DSSS), QAM, and OFDM can be reliably distinguished by the use of a single number: the fourth-order cumulant with two conjugated terms. This kind of cumulant is referred to as the $(4, 2)$ cumulant here at the CSP Blog, and in the paper, because the order is $n=4$ and the number of conjugated terms is $m=2$.