In this paper, we present a modified modulated wideband converter (MWC)-based digital receiver for fractional bandlimited signals, and further propose an intra-pulse modulation recognition method in discrete time fractional Fourier domain (DTFrFD) for the intercepted signals. The proposed digital receiver can move the cross-channel signal to the baseband and since the nonzero part of its available spectrum is narrower in DTFrFD than in discrete time Fourier domain (DTFD), so a better separation can be achieved by the proposed digital receiver than by original MWC-based receiver. Then, with the data acquired from the digital receiver, we propose an intra-pulse modulation recognition method based on the optimal transformation order and the spectral kurtosis (SK) in DTFrFD for the six types of fractional bandlimited signals. In this algorithm, the optimal transformation order is tested to distinguish the encoded signals from the non-encoded signals, and then the SK is tested to determine the intra-pulse modulation type specially. The computational complexity of the proposed method is much lower than search-based methods. Meanwhile, since the SK of Gaussian signals is zero in DTFrFD, the proposed method shows better robustness than the original MWC discrete compressive sampling structure against SNR variation. Simulation results confirm the obtained analytical results.INDEX TERMS Wideband digital receiver, modulated wideband converter, fractional Fourier transform, intra-pulse modulation recognition.