Trellis coding for spatial modulation

In this study, by combining trellis coding with spatial modulation (SM), a new multiple-input multiple output (MIMO) communication scheme called trellis coded spatial modulation (TC-SM) is proposed. For uncorrelated Rayleigh fading channels, code design criteria are given by deriving pairwise error probability (PEP) of this system, in which a trellis encoder and SM mapper are jointly designed. These criteria are then used to obtain 4, 8 and 16-states TC-SM schemes. It is shown via computer simulations that the proposed TC-SM schemes achieve better error performance than the classical space-time trellis codes with reduced decoder complexity.