Design guidelines for spatial modulation

A new class of low-complexity, yet energyefficient Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) transmission techniques, namely the family of Spatial Modulation (SM) aided MIMOs (SM-MIMO) has emerged. These systems are capable of exploiting the spatial dimensions (i.e. the antenna indices) as an additional dimension invoked for transmitting information, apart from the traditional Amplitude and Phase Modulation (APM). SM is capable of efficiently operating in diverse MIMO configurations in the context of future communication systems. It constitutes a promising transmission candidate for large-scale MIMO design and for the indoor optical wireless communication whilst relying on a single-Radio Frequency (RF) chain. Moreover, SM may also be viewed as an entirely new hybrid modulation scheme, which is still in its infancy. This paper aims for providing a general survey of the SM design framework as well as of its intrinsic limits. In particular, we focus our attention on the associated transceiver design, on spatial constellation optimization, on link adaptation techniques, on distributed/ cooperative protocol design issues, and on their meritorious variants

Single-RF spatial modulation requires single-carrier transmission: frequency-domain turbo equalization for dispersive channels

In this paper, we propose a broadband single-carrier (SC) spatial-modulation (SM) based multiple-input multipleoutput (MIMO) architecture relying on a soft-decision (SoD) frequency-domain equalization (FDE) receiver. We demonstrate that conventional orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM)-based broadband transmissions are not readily suitable for the single–radio frequency (RF) assisted SM-MIMO schemes, since this scheme does not exhibit any substantial performance advantage over single-antenna transmissions. To circumvent this limitation, a low-complexity soft-decision (SoD) FDE algorithm based on the minimum mean-square error (MMSE) criterion is invoked for our broadband SC-based SM-MIMO scheme, which is capable of operating in a strongly dispersive channel having a long channel impulse response (CIR) at a moderate decoding complexity. Furthermore, our SoD FDE attains a near-capacity performance with the aid of a three-stage concatenated SC-based SM architecture

Reduced-complexity non-coherent soft-decision-aided DAPSK dispensing with channel estimation

Differential Amplitude Phase Shift Keying (DAPSK), which is also known as star-shaped QAM has implementational advantages not only due to dispensing with channel estimation, but also as a benefit of its low signal detection complexity. It is widely recognized that separately detecting the amplitude and the phase of a received DAPSK symbol exhibits a lower complexity than jointly detecting the two terms. However, since the amplitude and the phase of a DAPSK symbol are affected by the correlated magnitude fading and phase-rotations, detecting the two terms completely independently results in a performance loss, which is especially significant for soft-decision-aided DAPSK detectors relying on multiple receive antennas. Therefore, in this contribution, we propose a new soft-decision-aided DAPSK detection method, which achieves the optimum DAPSK detection capability at a substantially reduced detection complexity. More specifically, we link each a priori soft input bit to a specific part of the channel's output, so that only a reduced subset of the DAPSK constellation points has to be evaluated by the soft DAPSK detector. Our simulation results demonstrate that the proposed soft DAPSK detector exhibits a lower detection complexity than that of independently detecting the amplitude and the phase, while the optimal performance of DAPSK detection is retained

Area spectral efficiency of soft-decision space–time–frequency shift-keying-aided slow-frequency-hopping multiple access

Slow-frequency-hopping multiple access (SFHMA) can provide inherent frequency diversity and beneficially randomize the effects of cochannel interference. It may also be advantageously combined with our novel space-time–frequency shift keying (STFSK) scheme. The proposed system’s area spectral efficiency is investigated in various cellular frequency reuse structures. Furthermore, it is compared to both classic Gaussian minimum shift keying (GMSK)-aided SFHMA and GMSK-assisted time- division/frequency-division multiple access (TD/FDMA). The more sophisticated third-generation wideband code-division multiple access (WCDMA) and the fourth-generation Long Term Evolution (LTE) systems were also included in our comparisons. We demonstrate that the area spectral efficiency of the STFSK-aided SFHMA system is higher than the GMSK-aided SFHMA and TD/FDMA systems, as well as WCDMA, but it is only 60% of the LTE system

Successive-relaying-aided decode-and-forward coherent versus noncoherent cooperative multicarrier space–time shift keying

Abstract—Successive-relaying-aided (SR) cooperative multi-carrier (MC) space–time shift keying (STSK) is proposed for frequency-selective channels. We invoke SR to mitigate the typical 50% throughput loss of conventional half-duplex relaying schemes and MC code-division multiple access (MC-CDMA) to circumvent the dispersive effects of wireless channels and to reduce the SR-induced interference. The distributed relay terminals form two virtual antenna arrays (VAAs), and the source node (SN) successively transmits frequency-domain (FD) spread signals to one of the VAAs, in addition to directly transmitting to the destination node (DN). The constituent relay nodes (RNs) of each VAA activate cyclic-redundancy-checking-based (CRC) selective decode-and-forward (DF) relaying. The DN can jointly detect the signals received via the SN-to-DN and VAA-to-DN links using a low-complexity single-stream-based joint maximum-likelihood (ML) detector. We also propose a differentially encoded cooperative MC-CDMA STSK scheme to facilitate communications over hostile dispersive channels without requiring channel estimation (CE). Dispensing with CE is important since the relays cannot be expected to altruistically estimate the SN-to-RN links for simply supporting the source. Furthermore, we propose soft-decision-aided serially concatenated recursive systematic convolutional (RSC) and unity-rate-coded (URC) cooperative MC STSK and investigate its performance in both coherent and noncoherent scenarios

Successive-relaying-aided decode-and-forward coherent versus noncoherent cooperative multicarrier space–time shift keying

Abstract—Successive-relaying-aided (SR) cooperative multi-carrier (MC) space–time shift keying (STSK) is proposed for frequency-selective channels. We invoke SR to mitigate the typical 50% throughput loss of conventional half-duplex relaying schemes and MC code-division multiple access (MC-CDMA) to circumvent the dispersive effects of wireless channels and to reduce the SR-induced interference. The distributed relay terminals form two virtual antenna arrays (VAAs), and the source node (SN) successively transmits frequency-domain (FD) spread signals to one of the VAAs, in addition to directly transmitting to the destination node (DN). The constituent relay nodes (RNs) of each VAA activate cyclic-redundancy-checking-based (CRC) selective decode-and-forward (DF) relaying. The DN can jointly detect the signals received via the SN-to-DN and VAA-to-DN links using a low-complexity single-stream-based joint maximum-likelihood (ML) detector. We also propose a differentially encoded cooperative MC-CDMA STSK scheme to facilitate communications over hostile dispersive channels without requiring channel estimation (CE). Dispensing with CE is important since the relays cannot be expected to altruistically estimate the SN-to-RN links for simply supporting the source. Furthermore, we propose soft-decision-aided serially concatenated recursive systematic convolutional (RSC) and unity-rate-coded (URC) cooperative MC STSK and investigate its performance in both coherent and noncoherent scenarios

Near-Capacity Turbo Coded Soft-decision Aided DAPSK/Star-QAM for Amplify-and-Forward based Cooperative Communications

Multilevel Differential Amplitude and Phase-Shift Keying (DAPSK) schemes do not require any channel estimation, which results in low complexity. In this treatise we derive the soft-output probability formulas required for a soft-decision based demodulation of high-order DAPSK, in order to facilitate iterative detection by exchanging extrinsic information with an outer Turbo Code (TC). Furthermore, when the TC block size is increased, the system operates closer to the channel capacity. Compared to the identical-throughput TC assisted 64-ary Differential Phase-Shift Keying (64-DPSK) scheme, the 4-ring based TC assisted 64-ary DAPSK arrangement has a power-efficiency improvement of 2.3 dB at a bit error rate (BER) of 10-5 . Furthermore, when the TC block size is increased, the system operates closer to the channel capacity. More specifically, when using a TC block length of 400 modulated symbols, the 64 DAPSK (4, 16) scheme is 7.56 dB away from its capacity curve, while it had a reduced gap as low as 2.25 dB, when using a longer TC block length of 40 000 modulated symbols. Finally, as a novel application example, the soft-decision M-DAPSK scheme was incorporated into an Amplify-and-Forward (AF) based cooperative communication system, which attains another 4.5 dB SNR improvement for a TC block length of 40 000 modulated symbols

Two-tier channel estimation aided near-capacity MIMO transceivers relying on norm-based joint transmit and receive antenna selection

We propose a norm-based joint transmit and receive antenna selection (NBJTRAS) aided near-capacity multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system relying on the assistance of a novel two-tier channel estimation scheme. Specifically, a rough estimate of the full MIMO channel is first generated using a low-complexity, low-training-overhead minimum mean square error based channel estimator, which relies on reusing a modest number of radio frequency (RF) chains. NBJTRAS is then carried out based on this initial full MIMO channel estimate. The NBJTRAS aided MIMO system is capable of significantly outperforming conventional MIMO systems equipped with the same modest number of RF chains, while dispensing with the idealised simplifying assumption of having perfectly known channel state information (CSI). Moreover, the initial subset channel estimate associated with the selected subset MIMO channel matrix is then used for activating a powerful semi-blind joint channel estimation and turbo detector-decoder, in which the channel estimate is refined by a novel block-of-bits selection based soft-decision aided channel estimator (BBSB-SDACE) embedded in the iterative detection and decoding process. The joint channel estimation and turbo detection-decoding scheme operating with the aid of the proposed BBSB-SDACE channel estimator is capable of approaching the performance of the near-capacity maximumlikelihood (ML) turbo transceiver associated with perfect CSI. This is achieved without increasing the complexity of the ML turbo detection and decoding process