Low-complexity non-coherent detection for spatial modulation OFDM systems

This letter describes a differential modulation scheme for spatial modulation orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (SM OFDM), aiming at developing low-complexity non-coherent detection without channel state information (CSI) at the receiver. By employing differential phase-shift keying (DPSK) between nonzero subcarrier at each transmit antenna, the proposed method can work with any number of transmit and receive antennas to realize high bandwidth efficiency. Additionally, the reference symbols at each transmit antenna are initialized at particular subcarriers, which are utilized to estimate the antenna indices at the receiver. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme gives rise to reasonable performance penalty in comparison to coherent SM OFDM.