A Survey on Directional Modulation: Opportunities, Challenges, Recent Advances, Implementations, and Future Trends

Directional modulation (DM) is a physical-layer security (PLS) technique implemented at the transmitter, leveraging antenna arrays to ensure secure communications. Through a process of spatial precoding between transceivers to transmit signals in specific directions, DM is capable of disrupting communications in unintended directions to prevent eavesdropping. In general, recent progress in the development of MIMO systems, including advanced radio frequency (RF), antenna technologies, along with innovative precoding algorithms, has enhanced the capabilities of DM techniques, leading to a multitude of robust DM variants. Hence, this survey aims to offer a comprehensive overview of DM, covering its fundamentals, promising variants, applications, hardware implementations, and future trends. Initially, the basic principle of DM is outlined in a general manner for subsequent comprehension. Subsequently, the large family of DM techniques is categorized into distinct variants based on the types of transmitting arrays. Next, we give a comprehensive survey of DM in common wireless scenarios, including multiuser (MU), relay, Internet of Things (IoT), and nonorthogonal access (NOMA) networks. Furthermore, we provide an illustration of DM system implementations, encompassing foundational architectures and cost-effective hardware realizations. Finally, concerning the unresolved challenges and current research focal points in DM, we present future research directions that merit further exploration and reference.