PRISM-AMC: Replay-Free Continual Learning for Automatic Modulation Classification

Usman Akram, Matthew Graham, Haris Vikalo

Automatic modulation classification (AMC) is a key component of cognitive wireless systems, enabling spectrum awareness and adaptive communication. Most deep learning approaches to AMC assume a fixed set of modulation classes and access to previously observed training data. In practice, modulation classes and channel conditions may evolve over time, while storage or data-retention constraints may preclude replay of raw baseband I/Q samples. We propose PRISM-AMC, a replay-free continual learning framework that mitigates catastrophic forgetting by preserving task-relevant subspaces of intermediate representations via gradient projection memory. We further analyze projected stochastic-gradient updates under an SNR-dependent gradient-noise model. PRISM-AMC is evaluated in both class-incremental and domain-incremental settings. Experiments on the MIGOU and DeepSig 2018.01A datasets show substantially reduced forgetting relative to sequential fine-tuning and elastic weight consolidation, while remaining competitive with or outperforming replay-based RSD-AMC in class-incremental settings, without storing raw I/Q samples.