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International J. of Engg. Research & Indu. Appls. (IJERIA).

ISSN 0974-1518, Vol.5, No. III (August 2012), pp. 55-68

DESIGN OF HIGH RATE AND LOW COMPLEXITY MIMO

TRANSMISSION CHANNEL

M. SUJITH

Abstract
The high-rate, low complexity MIMO transmission scheme, called STBC-SM, as an alternative to
existing techniques such as SM and VBLAST. The proposed new transmission scheme employs both
APM techniques and antenna indices to convey information and exploits the transmit diversity
potential of MIMO channels. A general technique has been presented for the construction of the
STBC-SM scheme for any number of transmit antennas in which the STBC-SM system was
optimized by deriving its diversity and coding gains to reach optimum performance. The STBC-SM
offers significant improvements in BER performance compared to SM and V-BLAST systems.

----------------------------------Keywords : Maximum likelihood decoding, MIMO systems, space-time block codes/coding, spatial
modulation.
http: //www.ascent-journals.com

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M. SUJITH

1. INTRODUCTION

The main contributions of this paper can be summarized as follows:

A new MIMO transmission scheme, called STBC-SM, is proposed, in which information is
conveyed with an STBC matrix that is transmitted from combinations of the transmit
antennas of the corresponding MIMO system. The Alamouti code is chosen as the target
STBC to exploit. As a source of information, we consider not only the two complex
information symbols embedded in Alamoutis STBC, but also the indices (positions) of the
two transmit antennas employed for the transmission of the Alamouti STBC.A general
technique is presented for constructing the STBC-SM-STTC scheme for any number of
transmit antennas. Since our scheme relies on STBC, by considering the general STBC
performance criteria diversity and coding gain analyses are performed for the STBC-SM
scheme to benefit the second order transmit diversity advantage of the Alamouti code.A low
complexity ML decoder is derived for the proposed STBC-SM system, to decide on the
transmitted symbols as well as on the indices of the two transmit antennas that are used in
the STBC transmission.It is shown by computer simulations that the proposed STBC-SM
scheme has significant performance advantages over the SM with an optimal decoder, due to
its diversity advantage. A closed form expression for the union bound on the bit error
probability of the STBCSM scheme is also derived to support our results. The derived upper
bound is shown to become very tight with increasing signal-to-noise (SNR) ratio.

2. OBJECTIVE OF THE PROJECT

A high-rate, low complexity MIMO transmission scheme, called STBC-SM, as an
alternative to existing techniques such as SM and VBLAST.

The proposed new transmission scheme employs both APM techniques and antenna
indices to convey information and exploits the transmit diversity potential of MIMO
channels.

3. EXISTING SYSTEM
In V-BLAST systems, a high level of inter-channel interference (ICI) occurs at the receiver
since all antennas transmit their own data streams at the same time. This further increases the
complexity of an optimal decoder exponentially, while low-complexity suboptimum linear

DESIGN OF HIGH RATE AND LOW COMPLEXITY MIMO TRANSMISSION CHANNEL

57

decoders, such as the minimum mean square error (MMSE) decoder, degrade the error
performance of the system significantly

4. DISADVANTAGES OF EXISTING SYSTEM

ML decoding complexity grows exponentially with the constellation size

Difficult implementation

Expensive for future wireless communication system

STBCs offer only diversity gain (compared to single-antenna schemes) and not coding gain.
There is no coding scheme included here the redundancy purely provides diversity in
space and time

5. PROPOSED SYSTEM
The Proposed system is classified in to three modules for analysis in mat lab environment
1. Space-time block coded spatial modulation
2. Performance analysis of the system
3. Simulation results and comparison
5.1 Space-Time Block Coded Spatial Modulation (STBC-SM)
In the STBC-SM scheme, both STBC symbols and the indices of the transmit antennas from
which these symbols are transmitted, carry information. We choose Alamoutis STBC,
which transmits one symbol pcu, as the core STBC due to its advantages in terms of spectral
efficiency and simplified ML detection. In Alamoutis STBC, two complex information
symbols (1 and 2) drawn from an -PSK or -QAM constellation are transmitted from
two transmit antennas in two symbol intervals in an orthogonal manner by the codeword
X = (x 1

x1
x 2 ) = *
- x2

x2

x1*

(1)

where columns and rows correspond to the transmit antennas and the symbol intervals,
respectively. For the STBC SM scheme we extend the matrix in (1) to the antenna domain.
Let us introduce the concept of STBC-SM via the following simple example
Example (STBC-SM with four transmits antennas, BPSK modulation): Consider a MIMO
system with four transmit an antenna which transmits the Alamouti STBC using one of the
following four codewords:

58

M. SUJITH
x1
*
x2

1 = {X 11 , X 12 } =

x2

x1*

x2 0 0 0 0 x1
,
x1* 0 0 0 0 x2*

0 x1
*
0 x 2

2 = {X 21 , X 22 } =

x2
x1*

0 x2
,
0 x1*

(2)

x1 j
e
0 0 x 2*
0 0

where , = 1, 2 are called the STBC-SM codebooks each containing two STBC-SM
codewords X, = 1, 2 which do not interfere to each other.
n

The resulting STBC-SM code is =

i =1

A non-interfering codeword group having elements is defined as a group of codewords

satisfying X ij X ikH = 022, , = 1, 2, . . . , , ; that is they have no overlapping
columns. In (2), is a rotation angle to be optimized for a given modulation format to ensure
maximum diversity and coding gain at the expense of expansion of the signal constellation.
However, if is not considered, overlapping columns of codeword pairs from different
codebooks would reduce the transmit diversity order to one. Assume now that we have four
information bits (1, 2, 3, 4) to be transmitted in two consecutive symbol intervals by the
STBCSM technique. The mapping rule for 2 bits/s/Hz transmission is given by Table I for
the codebooks of (2) and for binary phase-shift keying (BPSK) modulation, where a
realization of any codeword is called a transmission matrix.
Table 1 : STBC-SM mapping rule for 2bits/s/Hz Transmission using BPSK, Four Transmit
antennas and Alamoutis STBC

x1

Input

Transmission

Input

Bits

Matrices

Bits

0000

1000

0001

1001

L=0

L=2
0010

1010

x2

0011
L=1

0100

1011
L=3

1100

Transmission Matrices

DESIGN OF HIGH RATE AND LOW COMPLEXITY MIMO TRANSMISSION CHANNEL

Input

Transmission

Input

Bits

Matrices

Bits

0101

1101

0110

1110

0111

1111

59

Transmission Matrices

In Table I, the first two information bits (1, 2) are used to determine the antenna-pair
position while the last two (3, 4) determine the BPSK symbol pair. If we generalize this
system to - ary signaling, we have four different codewords each having 2 different
realizations. Consequently, the spectral efficiency of the STBC-SM scheme for four transmit
antennas becomes = (1/2) log242 = 1 + log2 bits/s/Hz, where the factor 1/2 normalizes
for the two channel uses spanned by the matrices in (2). For STBCs using larger numbers of
symbol intervals such as the quasi-orthogonal STBC for four transmit antennas which
employs four symbol intervals, the spectral efficiency will be degraded substantially due to
this normalization term since the number of bits carried by the antenna modulation (log2),
(where is the total number of antenna combinations) is normalized by the number of
channel uses of the corresponding STBC.
1

u1
l
u2

Antenna Pair
Selection
STBC-SM
Mapper

ulog2c

ulog2c+1
ulog2c+2

Symbol Pair
Selection

(x1,x2)

ulog2c+2log2M

Fig. 1. Block diagram of STBC-SM Transmitter

nT

60

M. SUJITH

On the other hand, for 16-QAM and 64-QAM signaling,

the selection of {}s in integer multiples of /2 would
not guarantee to maximize the minimum CGD for the

a n m[bits/s/Hz]

0.5+Log2M

1+Log2M

1.5+Log2M

1.5+Log2M

16

2+Log2M

16

2+Log2M

STBC-SM scheme. For 16-QAM signaling as well as for

64-QAM signaling, the optimal {}s must be
determined by an exhaustive computer search.nT

Table II-Basic Parameters of the STBC-SM system for different number of transmit antennas
In Table II, we summarize the basic parameters of the STBC-SM system for 3 8. We
observe that increasing the number of transmit antennas results in an increasing number of
antenna combinations and, consequently, increasing spectral efficiency achieved by the
STBC-SM scheme. However, this requires a larger number of angles to be optimized and
causes some reduction in the minimum CGD. On the other hand, when the same number of
combinations can be supported by different numbers of transmit antennas, a higher number
of transmit antennas requires fewer angles to be optimized resulting in higher minimum
CGD (for an example, the cases = 8, = 5 and 6 in Table II).
An ML decoder must make an exhaustive search over all possible 2 transmission
matrices, and decides in favor of the matrix that minimizes the following metric:

X = arg min Y
XH
X

(3)

As a result, the total number of ML metric calculations in (11) is reduced from 2 to 2,

yielding a linear decoding complexity as is also true for the SM scheme, whose optimal
decoder requires metric calculations. Obviously, since for 4, there will be a

DESIGN OF HIGH RATE AND LOW COMPLEXITY MIMO TRANSMISSION CHANNEL

61

linear increase in ML decoding complexity with STBC-SM as compared to the SM scheme.

However, as we will show in the next section, this insignificant increase in decoding
complexity is rewarded with significant performance improvement provided by the STBCSM. The last step of the decoding process is the demapping operation, to recover the input
bits u = (u1, , u log 2 c , u log 2 c +1 ,, u log 2 c + 2 log 2 M ) from the determined spatial position
(combination) l and the information symbols x1 and x 2 . The block diagram of the ML
decoder described above is given in Fig. 2.

Fig. 2. Block diagram of the STBC-SM ML receiver

5.2 Performance Analysis of the STBC-SM System

In this section, we analyze the error performance of the STBC-SM system, in which 2 bits
are transmitted during two consecutive symbol intervals using one of the 2 = 22 different
STBC-SM transmission matrices, denoted by X1,X2, . . . ,X 2 2 m here for convenience. An
upper bound on the average bit error probability (BEP) is given by the wellknown union
bound
1
Pb = 2 m
2

22 m

22 m

P (X i X j )ni , j

i =1

j =1

2m

(4)

62

M. SUJITH

where (X X) is the pairwise error probability (PEP) of deciding STBC-SM matrix X

given that the STBC SM matrix X is transmitted, and , is the number of bits in error
H

between the matrices X and X . Under the normalization = 1 and { tr (X X)} = 2, the
conditional PEP of the STBC-SM system is calculated as

(X i X j | H )
P (X i X j | H ) = Q
2

where ( = )1 / 2

) e

y2 / 2

(5)

dy . Averaging (5) over the channel matrix H and using the

moment generating function (MGF) approach, the unconditional PEP is obtained as

/2
1
1
P (X i X j ) =
i , j ,1
0
1 +
4 sin 2

nR

i , j , 2
1 +
4 sin 2

nR

(6)

where ,,1 and ,,2 are the eigenvalues of the distance matrix (X X)(X X).
If ,,1 = ,,2 = , , (6) simplifies to

/2
1
1
P (X i X j ) =
i , j
0
1 +
4 sin 2

2 nR

(7)

which is the PEP of the conventional Alamouti STBC. In case of = , for = 3 and for
an even number of transmit antennas when 4, it is observed that all transmission
matrices have the uniform error property due to the symmetry of STBC-SM codebooks, i.e.,
have the same PEP as that of X1. Thus, we obtain a BEP upper bound for STBC-SM as
follows:
22 m

P (X 1 X j )n1, j

j=2

2m

Pb

(8)

Applying the natural mapping to transmission matrices, 1, can be directly calculated as

1,= ([ 1)2], where ][and ()2 are the Hamming weight and the binary representation
of , respectively. Consequently, from (8), we obtain the union bound on the BEP as

22 m
w[( j 1)2 ] / 2
1
Pb
1, j ,1
2m 0
j =2
1 +
4 sin 2

nR

1, j , 2
1 +
4 sin 2

nR

(9)

DESIGN OF HIGH RATE AND LOW COMPLEXITY MIMO TRANSMISSION CHANNEL

63

which will be evaluated in the next section for different system parameters.
5.3 Simulation Results And Comparisons
In this section, we present simulation results for the STBCSM system with different numbers
of transmit antennas. All performance comparisons are made for a BER value of 105.
We first present the BEP upper bound curves of the STBC-SM scheme are evaluated from
(25) and depicted in the following Figures. It follows that the derived upper bound becomes
very tight with increasing SNR values for all cases and can be used as a helpful tool to
estimate the error performance behavior of the STBC-SM scheme with different setups. Also
note that the BER curves for nT=3,4 and BPSK, QPSK modulations from Fig. 3,4,5,6; are
shifted to the right while their slope remains unchanged and equal to 2, with increasing
spectral efficiency.
In Fig. 7, the BER curves of STBC-SM with = 4 and QPSK is evaluated for 3 bits/s/Hz
transmission.
In Fig. 8, 9, we employ two different STBC-SM schemes with = 8 and QPSK, and = 4
and 8-QAM for 4 bits/s/Hz.
We observe 3 dB SNR gap between two STBC-SM schemes in favor of the one that uses a
smaller constellation and relies more heavily on the use of the spatial domain to achieve 4
bits/s/Hz. However the number of required metric calculations for ML decoding of the first
STBC-SM scheme is equal to 128 while the other ones is equal to 64, which provides an
interesting trade-off between complexity and performance Based on these examples, we
conclude that for a given spectral efficiency, as the modulation order increases, the
number of transmit antennas should decrease, and consequently the SNR level needed for
a fixed BER will increase while the overall decoding complexity will be reduced. On the
other hand, as the modulation order decreases, the number of transmit antennas should
increase, and as a result the SNR level needed for a fixed BER will decrease while the
overall decoding complexity increases.
In Figs. 10 and 11, we extend our simulation studies to 5 and 6 bits/s/Hz transmission
schemes, respectively.
For 5 bits/s/Hz transmission we consider STBC-SM with = 4 and 16-QAM
For 6 bits/s/Hz transmission we consider STBC-SM with = 8 and 16-QAM.

64

M. SUJITH

Fig. 3. BER performance of STBC-SM scheme for nT =3, BPSK modulation

Fig. 4. BER performance of STBC-SM scheme for nT =4, BPSK modulation

Fig. 5. BER performance of STBC-SM scheme for nT =3, QPSK modulation

DESIGN OF HIGH RATE AND LOW COMPLEXITY MIMO TRANSMISSION CHANNEL

Fig. 6. BER performance of STBC-SM scheme for nT =4, QPSK modulation

Fig. 7. BER performance at 3bits/s/Hz of STBC-SM scheme for nT =4, QPSK modulation

Fig. 8. BER performance at 4bits/s/Hz of STBC-SM scheme for nT =8, QPSK modulation

65

66

M. SUJITH

Fig. 9. BER performance at 4bits/s/Hz of STBC-SM scheme for nT =4, 8-QAM modulation

Fig. 10. BER performance at 5bits/s/Hz of STBC-SM scheme for nT =4, 16-QAMmodulation

Fig. 11. BER performance at 6bits/s/Hz of STBC-SM scheme for nT =8, 16-QAM modulation

DESIGN OF HIGH RATE AND LOW COMPLEXITY MIMO TRANSMISSION CHANNEL

67

CONCLUSION
In this paper, we have introduced a novel high-rate, low complexity MIMO transmission
scheme, called STBC-SM, as an alternative to existing techniques such as SM and VBLAST.
The proposed new transmission scheme employs both APM techniques and antenna indices
to convey information and exploits the transmit diversity potential of MIMO channels. A
general technique has been presented for the construction of the STBC-SM-STTC scheme
for any number of transmit antennas in which the STBC-SM system was optimized by
deriving its diversity to reach optimum performance. It has been shown by a theoretical
upper bound analysis that the STBC-SM-STTC offers significant improvements in BER
performance compared to SM and V-BLAST systems (approximately 3-5 dB depending on
the spectral efficiency) with an acceptable linear increase in decoding complexity. From a
practical implementation point of view, the RF (radio frequency) front-end of the system
should be able to switch between different transmit antennas similar to the classical SM
scheme. On the other hand, unlike V-BLAST in which all antennas are employed to transmit
simultaneously, the number of required RF chains is only two in our scheme, and the
synchronization of all transmit antennas would not be required. We conclude that the STBCSM_STTC scheme can be useful for high-rate, low complexity, emerging wireless
communication systems such as LTE and WiMAX.

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68

M. SUJITH

[10] Mesleh R., Haas H., Sinanovic S., Ahn C. W., and Yun S., Spatial modulation,"
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M. Sujith
Lecturer,
Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering,
Vidyaa Vikas College of Engineering and Technology,
Tiruchengode, India.