Differential Spatial Modulation With Gray Coded Antenna Activation Order

In this letter, we propose a gray code order of antenna index permutations for differential spatial modulation (DSM). To facilitate the implementation, the well-known Trotter–Johnson ranking and unranking algorithms are adopted, which result in similar computational complexity to the existing DSM that uses the lexicographic order. The signal-to-noise ratio gain achieved by the proposed gray code order over the lexicographic order is also analyzed and verified via simulations. Based on the gray coding framework, we further propose a diversity-enhancing scheme named intersected gray (I-gray) code order, where the permutations of active antenna indices are selected directly from the odd (or even) positions of the full permutations in the gray code order. From analysis and simulations, it is shown that the I-gray code order can harvest an additional transmit diversity order with respect to the gray code order.