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A large-scale differential-detection aided generalized spatial modulation (GSM) system is proposed, which relies on a novel Gram-Schmidt basis set and an adaptive low-complexity detector, and is evidently suitable for high-mobility millimeter-wave (mmWave) channels. We consider non-stationary time-varying mmWave channels and assume that the beam-angles remain relatively fixed, while the channel coefficients vary rapidly. In this scenario, it is a challenging task to find the accurate estimates of channel coefficients for digital beamforming, which becomes an even more severe problem, as the numbers of subarrays and subcarriers increase. Our analog-beamforming-aided nonsquare differentially-detected scheme achieves a higher transmission rate than the conventional coherent multiple-input multiple-output schemes because the pilot overhead and the complex-valued feedback are eliminated. Our simulation results following the IEEE 802.11ad specifications show that the performance of our proposed nonsquare differential GSM improved upon increasing the number of subarrays, where the maximum transmission rate of 16 [bps/Hz] was considered.

Two decades of full-diversity high-rate MIMO research has created perfect Space-Time Block Codes (STBCs) including the Golden code. However, the major stumbling block of their wide-spread employment is their limited energy-efficiency. On one hand, the superposition of their signals results in a high Peak-to-Average Power Ratio (PAPR). On the other hand, the total number of equivalent Inter-Antenna Interference (IAI) contributions that the receiver has to deal with is increased to $\text{IAI}=M^2$ upon using $M$ Transmit Antennas (TAs), which is a substantial extra price compared to the $\text{IAI}=M$ of V-BLAST. Against this background, we propose a new family of Finite-Cardinality Generalized Space-Time Shift Keying (FC-GSTSK). More explicitly, the proposed FC-GSTSK is capable of outperforming both V-BLAST and STBC, which is the ultimate objective of full-diversity high-rate MIMO design. Furthermore, following the index modulation philosophy, the proposed FC-GSTSK replaces the signal-additions by the data-carrying signal-selection process. As a benefit, the FC-GSTSK substantially reduces the PAPR of signal transmission. As a further advantage, the equivalent IAI imposed on signal detection is reduced back to the same level as that of V-BLAST. Moreover, the proposed FC-GSTSK is even capable of consistently outperforming the perfect STBCs in terms of its Peak Signal to Noise-power Ratio (PSNR) that takes into account the power consumption at the transmitter. As a further advance, the reduced-RF-chain based version of FC-GSTSK is also capable of outperforming both Generalized Spatial Modulation (GSM) and Space-Time Block Coded Spatial Modulation (STBC-SM) without increasing the PAPR and the equivalent IAI.

A simplified rectangular differential spatial modulation (S-RDSM) scheme is conceived for massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems dispensing with the channel state information (CSI). In the proposed S-RDSM scheme, the information bits are first mapped to a conventional SM symbol and then rectangular differential encoding is invoked between a pair of SM symbols. Then a non-coherent detector relying on a forgetting factor is developed, which requires no CSI at the receiver. Explicitly, a low-complexity hard limited maximum likelihood (HL-ML) detector is conceived for our generalized S-RDSM scheme, which is characterized by our theoretical analysis. Furthermore, we derive the optimal forgetting factor in closed form, which is capable of significantly reducing the complexity of the associated optimization. Finally, the upper bounds of the average bit error probability (ABEP) are derived using the moment generating function (MGF), and are validated by our simulation results. Both the theoretical and simulation results have shown that the proposed S-RDSM system outperforms the existing non-coherent schemes, despite operating at 10% of the benchmarker’s complexity, whilst approaching the performance of its coherent SM counterpart at a comparable complexity.

The matrix-based differential encoding invoked by Differential Space-Time Modulation (DSTM) typically results in an infinite-cardinality of arbitrary signals, despite the fact that the Transmit Antennas (TAs) can only radiate a limited number of patterns. As a remedy, the recently developed Differential Spatial Modulation (DSM) is capable of avoiding this problem by conceiving a beneficial sparse signal matrix design, which also facilitates low-complexity single-RF signal transmission. Inspired by this development, the Differential Space-Time Block Code using Index Shift Keying (DSTBC-ISK) further introduces a beneficial diverstiy gain without compromising the DSM's appealingly low transceiver complexity. However, the DSTBC-ISK's performance advantage tends to diminish as the throughput increases, especially when an increased number of Receive Antennas (RAs) is used. By contrast, the classic Differential Group Code (DGC) that actively maximizes its diversity gain for different Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) system setups is capable of achieving a superior performance, but its detection complexity grows exponentially with the throughtput. Against this background, we propose the Differential Space-Time Shift Keying using Diagonal Algebraic Space-Time (DSTSK-DAST) scheme, which is the first DSTM that is capable of achieving the DGC's superior diversity gain at high throughputs without compromising the DSM's low transceiver complexity. As a further advance, we also conceive a new Differential Space-Time Shift Keying using Threaded Algebraic Space-Time (DSTSK-TAST) arrangement, which is capable of achieving an even further improved diversity gain at a substantially reduced signal detection complexity compared to the best DGCs. Furthermore, in order to strike a practical tradeoff, we develop a generic multi-element and multi-level-ring Amplitude Phase Shift Keying (APSK) design, and we also arrange for multiple reduced-size DSTM sub-blocks to be transmitted in a permuted manner, which exhibits an improved diversity-throughput tradeoff.

This paper presents a proposal of an open-source index modulation (IM) toolkit, which facilitates reproducible research and accelerates open innovation in IM studies. The proposed toolkit is implemented based on massively parallel algorithms that are designed for state-of-the-art graphics processing units (GPUs). Since high-performance GPUs are available at low cost, along with the intensive development in deep learning, this toolkit achieves large scale but significantly fast Monte Carlo simulations at low cost. Two large-tensor-based parallel algorithms are introduced for bit error ratio and average mutual information simulations. Additionally, the design of active indices is newly formulated into an integer linear programming problem that guarantees optimality, which is applicable to the generalized spatial modulation and subcarrier-index modulation schemes. Performance comparisons demonstrated that the proposed GPU-aided algorithms were up to 145 times faster than the conventional CPU-aided efficient counterparts. Furthermore, the designed active indices achieved the theoretical optimum performance in contrast to widely used conventional methods. A comprehensive database of these designed active indices is released online and is available to any researcher.

The existing time-division duplex (TDD) and frequency-division duplex (FDD) techniques rely on a guard time and/or a guard band to avoid self-interference (SI) between the uplink and downlink channels, which results in the wastage of precious spectral resources. The full-duplex (FD) schemes of in-band FD (IBFD), as well as multicarrier division duplex (MDD), may overcome this drawback while retaining the key benefits of both TDD and FDD. Moreover, the MDD exhibits the exclusive benefits of the reduced peak-to-average-power ratio (PAPR) for signal transmission as well as the SI-free signal detection. Against this background, in this paper, we propose a novel FD scheme conceived for frequency-selective millimeter-wave (mmWave) channels, which have not been investigated in the open literature. Furthermore, we propose a novel projection-aided iterative eigenvalue decomposition (P-IEVD) algorithm, which performs null-space SI cancellation in the inherent beamforming structure of mmWave communication. Our simulation results confirm that the MDD is capable of outperforming its half-duplex (HD) counterparts of the TDD/FDD, even the IBFD can only achieve a better bandwidth efficiency than the MDD when a sufficiently high SNR is provided.

In this paper, we propose, implement, and evaluate a simple yet powerful estimation method for the quality of service of a large-scale Wi-Fi network, which is achieved using our passive and low-complexity measurements. Specifically, our proposed method estimates a time-varying frame error rate at an access point (AP) by counting null function data frames, which are emitted periodically by stationary user equipments (UEs), such as mobile phones and tablets. We implemented our method as a user-level script and a production-level firmware. Our real-world measurements in an uncontrolled 1500-seat hall demonstrated that our method exhibited high scalability against the increase in the numbers of APs and UEs with the aid of its simple structure and was capable of detecting the quality-of-service loss induced by an unexpected dynamic frequency selection.

In this paper, a novel differential space-time coding scheme is conceived for open-loop noncoherent multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) downlink scenarios, where the transmission rate increases logarithmically in a scalable manner upon increasing the number of transmit antennas. More specifically, the proposed scheme relies on the projection of a differentially encoded square matrix to its rectangular counterpart and so is capable of reducing the number of symbol intervals needed for block transmission. This is especially beneficial for massive MIMO scenarios, in which the number of transmit antennas is very high. Another advantage exclusive to the presented scheme is that no channel state information (CSI) is required at either the transmitter or the receiver, which eliminates pilot overhead, CSI estimation, CSI feedback, and time-division duplex reciprocity. Furthermore, the rectangular transmission matrix of the proposed scheme contains only a single non-zero element per column, and hence, the transmitter may rely on only a single RF chain, similar to the conventional coherent spatial modulation scheme.

We consider differential spatial modulation (DSM) operating in a block fading environment and propose sparse unitary dispersion matrices (DMs) using algebraic field extensions. The proposed DM sets are capable of exploiting full transmit diversity and, in contrast to the existing schemes, can be constructed for systems having an arbitrary number of transmit antennas. More specifically, two schemes are proposed: 1) field-extension-based DSM (FE-DSM), where only a single conventional symbol is transmitted per space–time block; and 2) FE-DSM striking a diversity–rate tradeoff (FE-DSM-DR), where multiple symbols are transmitted in each space–time block at the cost of a reduced transmit diversity gain. Furthermore, the FE-DSM scheme is analytically shown to achieve full transmit diversity, and both proposed schemes are shown to impose decoding complexity, which is independent of the size of the signal set. It is observed from our simulation results that the proposed FE-DSM scheme suffers no performance loss compared with the existing DM-based DSM (DM-DSM) scheme, whereas FE-DSM-DR is observed to give a better bit-error-ratio performance at higher data rates than its DM-DSM counterpart. Specifically, at data rates of 2.25 and 2.75 bits per channel use, FE-DSM-DR is observed to achieve about 1- and 2-dB signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) gain with respect to its DM-DSM counterpart.

Index modulation (IM) is a recently proposed multi-carrier transmission scheme, which conveys information both by conventional symbols as well as by the specific subcarrier activation patterns conveying them. However, an impediment of IM is that it lacks transmit diversity gain. In this paper, we circumvent this limitation by proposing a limited-feedback assisted IM transmission scheme. Specifically, Euclidean distance based subcarrier subset selection (ED-SSS) is proposed and its attainable transmit diversity order is shown to be $N_c-N_{IM}+1$ , where $N_c$ is the total number of subcarriers in an IM block and $N_{IM}$ is the number of subcarriers used for IM. Furthermore, the ED-SSS is shown to be amenable to low-complexity implementation owing to the orthogonality of its subcarriers. In order to attain the maximum transmit diversity order of $N_c$ , ED-SSS is further extended with the aid of transmit precoding and its transmit diversity order is quantified. The proposed precoding assisted ED-SSS is shown to subsume several of the existing precoding aided IM transmission schemes. Simulation studies are conducted for validating our theoretical claims and also for quantifying the attainable performance gains of the proposed schemes. Specifically, at a BER of $10^{-3}$ an SNR gain as high as 8 dB is observed in case of precoding when compared to its counterpart operating without precoding.

In this paper, we propose a simple yet powerful mapping scheme that converts any conventional square-matrix-based differential space-time coding (DSTC) into a nonsquare-matrix-based DSTC. This allows DSTC schemes to be used practically in open-loop large-scale multiple-input multiple-output scenarios. Our proposed scheme may be viewed as the differential counterpart of coherent spatial modulation (SM), of the generalized SM, of Bell laboratories layered space-time architecture, and of subcarrier-index modulation. The fundamental impediment of the existing DSTC schemes is the excessive complexity imposed by the unitary constraint. Specifically, the transmission rate of conventional DSTC schemes decays as the number of transmit antennas increases. Our proposed scheme eliminates this impediment and thus achieves a significantly higher transmission rate. We introduce four novel construction methods for the nonsquare codewords, some of which include an arbitrary number of nonzero elements in each codeword column. Our analysis showsthat the proposed encoding technique reduces the complexity of both the inverse Fourier transform and of the detection processes. Our proposed scheme is shown to approach the performance of its coherent counterpart for low-mobility scenarios, where the number of transmit antennas is increased up to 256.

In this treatise, we provide an interdisciplinary survey on spatial modulation (SM), where multiple-input multiple-output microwave and visible light, as well as single and multicarrier communications are considered. Specifically, we first review the permutation modulation (PM) concept, which was originally proposed by Slepian in 1965. The PM concept has been applied to a wide range of applications, including wired and wireless communications and data storage. By introducing a three-dimensional signal representation, which consists of spatial, temporal and frequency axes, the hybrid PM concept is shown to be equivalent to the recently proposed SM family. In contrast to other survey papers, this treatise aims for celebrating the hitherto overlooked studies, including papers and patents that date back to the 1960s, before the invention of SM. We also provide simulation results that demonstrate the pros and cons of PM-aided low-complexity schemes over conventional multiplexing schemes., 34 pages, 28 figures, 10 tables, accepted for publication in IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials

We propose a new single-RF Differential Space-Time Block Coding using Index Shift Keying (DSTBC-ISK), which is the first in the family of Differential Space-Time Modulation (DSTM) schemes that can simultaneously achieve the following three imperative objectives of (1) forming a finite-cardinality transmit-signals set under the matrix multiplications of differential encoding; (2) retaining a single-stream ML detection complexity that does not grow with the constellation size; (3) offering a beneficial transmit diversity gain over the recently developed Differential Spatial Modulation (DSM). In order to make a fair comparison, we also conceive a low-complexity single-stream detector for DSM, which does not impose any performance loss in comparison to the existing solutions in open literature. Furthermore, in order to improve the performance of finite-cardinality DSTM schemes at higher throughputs, we propose to generalize both Differential Amplitude Shift Keying (DASK) and Amplitude Shift Keying (ASK), which form the generic multi-level-ring star QAM constellation that subsumes the existing two/four-level-ring DASK solutions as special cases. Although the DASK approach has been popularly used in DSTM schemes, we demonstrate that our generalized ASK technique achieves a higher capacity and a better performance in channel coding assisted systems. Moreover, since the employment of star QAM constellations imposes the ring-amplitude dependent signal power problem for detection, we further develop bespoke Maximum-Likelihood (ML), Minimum Mean Squared Error (MMSE) and Least Square (LS) detectors for DSTM using DASK/ASK, which exhibit different performance versus complexity tradeoffs. Our simulation results demonstrate that the proposed DSTBC-ISK is capable of achieving substantial diversity gains over DSM without eroding its low transceiver complexity.

The achievable performance of subcarrier-index modulation (SIM) is analyzed in terms of its minimum Euclidean distance, constrained and unconstrained average mutual information, as well as its peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR). Our performance investigations identify the beneficial operating region of the SIM scheme over its conventional orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) counterpart, hence providing general design guidelines for the SIM parameters. More specifically, an SIM scheme is shown to be beneficial for the scenario of a relatively low transmission rate below 2 b/s/Hz. In addition, we demonstrate that the PAPR of the SIM scheme is comparable with that of its OFDM counterpart under the idealized simplifying assumption of having Gaussian input symbols.

We show that certain signal constellations invoked for classic differential encoding result in a phenomenon we term as the {\em unbounded differential constellation size} (UDCS). Various existing differential transmission schemes that suffer from this issue are identified. Then, we propose an enhanced algebraic field extension based differential spatial modulation scheme (AFE-DSM) and its enhanced counterpart that strikes a diversity-rate trade-off (AFE-DSM-DR), both of which overcome the UDCS issue without compromising its full transmit diversity advantage. Furthermore, the proposed schemes are extended to incorporate amplitude and phase shift keying (APSK) in order to exploit all the available degrees of freedom. Additionally, we propose a pair of detection schemes specially designed for APSK aided differential transmission schemes. Explicitly, we conceive the buffered minimum mean squared error (B-MMSE) detector and buffered maximum likelihood (B-ML) detector, which exploit the knowledge of previously detected symbols in order to further improve the detection performance. Our simulation results have shown that the proposed detectors are capable of bridging the performance gap between the conventional differential detector (CDD) and the coherent detector that has full channel state information. Specifically, when employing the proposed APSK aided AFE-DSM scheme operating at a rate of 2 bits per channel use (bpcu), the B-MMSE and B-ML detectors are observed to give about 3 dB and 3.5 dB signal-to-noise ratio gain with respect to their CDD counterpart at a bit error ratio of $10^{-5}$.

Generalized spatial modulation (GSM)-based millimeter-wave (mmWave) communications system is proposed. The GSM transmitter is characterized by a lower number of radio frequency (RF) chains than the number of transmit antennas, hence it is capable of reducing both the transmitter cost as well as the energy consumption. The antenna array alignment is optimized so as to maximize the rank of the channel matrix encountered. Furthermore, we employ an array of analog beamformers, which allows us to benefit both from the beamforming gain as well as from the GSM scheme’s high rate. It is demonstrated that the constrained capacity of the GSM transmitter equipped with as few as two RF chains is capable of approaching the performance of the full-RF spatial multiplexing having eight RF chains.

Sixty years of coherent versus non-coherent tradeoff as well as the twenty years of coherent versus non-coherent tradeoff in Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) systems are surveyed. Furthermore, the advantages of adaptivity are discussed. More explicitly, in order to support the diverse communication requirements of different applications in a unified platform, the 5G New Radio (NR) offers unprecendented adaptivity, abeit at the cost of a substantial amount of signalling overhead that consumes both power and the valuable spectral resources. Striking a beneficial coherent versus non-coherent tradeoff is capable of reducing the pilot overheads of channel estimation, whilst relying on low-complexity detectors, especially in high-mobility scenarios. Furthermore, since energy-efficiency is of salient importance both in the operational and future networks, following the powerful Index Modulation (IM) pholosophy, we conceive a holistic adaptive pholosophy striking the most appropriate coherent/non-coherent, single-/multiple-antenna and diversity/multiplexing tradeoffs, where the number of RF chains, the Peak-to-Average Power Ratio (PAPR) of signal transmission and the maximum amount of interference tolerated by signal detection are all taken into account. We demonstrate that this intelligent tripple-fold adaptivity offers significant benefits in next-generation applications of mmWave and Terahertz solutions, in space-air-ground integrated networks, in full-duplex techniques and in other sophisticated channel coding assisted system designs, where powerful machine learning algorithms are expected to make autonomous decisions concerning the best mode of operation with minimal human intervention.

As the enabling technologies move up to the mmWave and even to the TeraHertz bands for the next-generation wireless systems, the signal processing of high-bandwidth orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) becomes increasingly power-thirsty, owing to the following OFDM deficiencies: (1) the high peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR); (2) the bandwidth efficiency loss due to the cyclic prefix (CP) overhead; (3) the sensitivity to carrier frequency offset; (4) the complex out-of-band (OOB) filtering. Over the past six decades, a variety of waveforms have been developed in order to mitigate these deficiencies, which are generally achieved at the cost of compromising some of OFDM's beneficial properties, such as its subcarrier (SC) orthogonality, its high throughput and its straighforward adoption to multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. Against this background, we propose a new waveform termed as multi-band discrete Fourier transform spread-OFDM with index modulation (MB-DFT-S-OFDM-IM), where the component multi-carrier techniques are conceived to constructively function together in order to mitigate the OFDM deficiencies without compromising the beneficial OFDM properties. More explicitly, first of all, the PAPR is reduced by the DFT-precoding. Secondly, thanks to the IM design, MB-DFT-S-OFDM-IM is capable of achieving a high throughput that is strictly equal to or higher than the OFDM throughput. Thirdly, MB-DFT-S-OFDM-IM achieves a beneficial frequency diversity gain, which leads to a higher tolerance to carrier frequency offset. Fourthly, the OOB filters are placed in each sub-band before DFT, so that the SC orthogonality remains intact, which is unique to the proposed MB-DFT-S-OFDM-IM structure. Last but not least, we extend the proposed MB-DFT-S-OFDM-IM to support a variety of MIMO schemes, where the IM philosophy is integrated with the space-, time-and frequency-domains within a single unified platform.