New Approach in the Error Performance Analysis of SM over Time-Variant Rayleigh Fading Channels

In this paper, a spatial modulation (SM)-based multiple input multiple output (MIMO) wireless communication system that is operating over time-variant Rayleigh fading channels is considered. The channel state information (CSI) is assumed to be estimated perfectly and on the basis of the piloted estimation method. For such a system, an analytical approach is proposed to derive the system”s conditional pairwise-error-probability (PEP) exactly. The approach starts by reducing the SM maximum likelihood (ML) decoding rule to classical decision-statistic rule. The distribution of the decision-statistic is then determined to be zero-mean Gaussian, which helps in obtaining the conditional PEP directly in terms of the Q-function. The derived conditional PEP expression is new, explicitly expressed in terms of variant system and channel parameters, and directly used to compute the system”s average bit error probability. Numerical and simulation results are presented to verify the derivations and to demonstrate some insightful performance observations.