Performance of Spatial Modulation using Measured Real-World Channels

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the performance of spatial modulation (SM) using real-world urban MIMO channel measurements, comparing it with simulated channels and analyzing its advantages over spatial multiplexing (SMX).

Contribution

It provides the first analysis of SM performance using measured urban channels, validating analytical bounds and comparing with simulated channels and SMX.

Findings

SM performance validated by measured urban channels

SM offers comparable or better performance than SMX in small MIMO

SM achieves significant ABER reduction in large MIMO

Abstract

In this paper, for the first time real-world channel measurements are used to analyse the performance of spatial modulation (SM), where a full analysis of the average bit error rate performance (ABER) of SM using measured urban correlated and uncorrelated Rayleigh fading channels is provided. The channel measurements are taken from an outdoor urban multiple input multiple output (MIMO) measurement campaign. Moreover, ABER performance results using simulated Rayleigh fading channels are provided and compared with a derived analytical bound for the ABER of SM, and the ABER results for SM using the measured urban channels. The ABER results using the measured urban channels validate the derived analytical bound and the ABER results using the simulated channels. Finally, the ABER of SM is compared with the performance of spatial multiplexing (SMX) using the measured urban channels for small and large scale MIMO. It is shown that SM offers nearly the same or a slightly better performance than SMX for small scale MIMO. However, SM offers large reduction in ABER for large scale MIMO.