Transmit Diversity Assisted Space Shift Keying for Colocated and Distributed/Cooperative MIMO Elements

Space Shift Keying (SSK) modulation is a recently proposed MIMO technique, which activates only a single transmit antenna during each time slot and uses the specific index of the activated transmit antenna to implicitly convey information. Activating a single antenna is beneficial in terms of eliminating the inter-channel interference, and mitigates the peak-to-mean power ratio, while avoiding the need for synchronisation among transmit antennas. However, this benefit is achieved at a sacrifice, since the transmit diversity gain potential of the multiple transmit antennas is not fully exploited in existing SSK assisted systems. Furthermore, a high SSK throughput requires the transmitter to employ a high number of transmit antennas, which is not always practical. Hence, we propose four algorithms, namely open-loop Space Time Space Shift Keying (ST-SSK), closed-loop feedback-aided phase rotation, feedback-aided power allocation, and cooperative ST-SSK, for the sake of achieving a diversity gain. The performance improvements of the proposed schemes are demonstrated by Monte-Carlo simulations for spatially independent Rayleigh fading channels. Their robustness against channel estimation errors is also considered. We advocate the proposed ST-SSK techniques, which are capable of achieving a transmit diversity gain of about 10 dB at a BER of 10-5, at a cost of imposing a moderate throughput loss dedicated to a modest feedback overhead. Furthermore, our proposed ST-SSK scheme lends itself to efficient communication, because the deleterious effects of deep shadow fading no longer impose spatial correlation on the signals received by the antennas, which cannot be readily avoided by co-located antenna elements