Practical Implementation of Spatial Modulation

In this paper, we seek to characterize the performance of spatial modulation (SM) and spatial multiplexing (SMX) with an experimental testbed. Two National Instruments (NI) PXIe devices are used for the system testing: one for the transmitter and one for the receiver. The digital signal processing (DSP) that formats the information data in preparation for transmission is described, along with the DSP that recovers the information data. In addition, the hardware limitations of the system are also analyzed. The average bit-error ratio (ABER) of the system is validated through both theoretical analysis and simulation results for SM and SMX under the line-of-sight (LoS) channel conditions.