Virtual Spatial Channel Number and Index Modulation

Zahid Iqbal, Fei Ji, Yun Liu

Abstract: This paper proposes a novel precoding-aided and efficient data transmission scheme called virtual spatial channel number and index modulation (VS-CNIM), which conveys extra data by changing both the number and index of active virtual parallel channels of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channels, obtained through the singular value decomposition (SVD) in each time slot. Unlike the conventional virtual spatial modulation (VSM), where extra data bits are transmitted only using index of active virtual parallel channels, the VS-CNIM scheme, depending on incoming information bits, transmits extra bits utilizing both the number and indices of active parallel channels along the bits carried by <span class="nowrap"><svg xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" style="vertical-align:-0.0498209pt" id="M1" height="8.68572pt" version="1.1" viewBox="-0.0498162 -8.6359 12.9526 8.68572" width="12.9526pt"><g transform="matrix(.013,0,0,-0.013,0,0)"><path id="g113-78" d="M962 650H795L470 145L347 650H176L170 622C268 613 275 606 244 503L190 322C150 188 132 126 118 91C102 50 80 33 18 28L12 0H245L251 28C175 35 170 48 174 93C177 128 191 180 220 284L292 542H294C331 392 383 150 409 4H432L774 555H776L714 137C700 40 694 34 612 28L606 0H868L874 28C793 34 784 37 797 137L849 533C859 612 863 616 956 622L962 650Z"/></g></svg>-</span>ary constellation symbols. Therefore, VS-CNIM provides significantly superior spectral efficiency (SE) compared to VSM. Considering the influence of imperfect channel estimation, a closed-form upper bound is derived on average bit error probability (ABEP). The asymptotic performance is also analyzed, which gives the coding gain and diversity order and describes error floor under the consideration of perfect and imperfect channel estimation, respectively. Monte Carlo simulations exhibit that the VS-CNIM scheme achieves considerably better error performance and high SE than precoding-aided SM (PSM) and VSM schemes.