Hyper-Dimensional Modulation for Robust Short Packets in Massive Machine-Type Communications

In this paper, we introduce Hyper-Dimensional Modulation (HDM) for massive machine-type communications (mMTC). HDM enables robust communication of short packets by spreading information bits across many elements in a hyper-dimensional vector and superimposing a set of such non-orthogonal vectors. The proposed CRC-aided K-best decoding algorithm for HDM can achieve a very low packet error rate (PER) in additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channels for short packets. Furthermore, extended decoding algorithms are proposed to combat overwhelming interference in an mMTC network. Comprehensive simulation and real-world experiment results show that HDM outperforms sparse superposition codes in AWGN channels and state-of-the-art short codes such as polar and tail-biting convolutional codes in interference-heavy channels for short packet transmissions.