Effects of Antenna Switching on Band-Limited Spatial Modulation

In this letter, we investigate the effects of antenna switching on band-limited spatial modulation (SM), where the employment of an SM-specific practical time-limited shaping filter is taken into account. More specifically, we evaluate the SM scheme's performance penalty imposed on a bandwidth efficiency, which arises due to the time-limited pulse transmissions. Furthermore, to combat this limitation while maintaining lower RF chains than transmit antenna elements, we propose a multiple-RF antenna switching operation that allows us to exploit a longer pulse shape than that enabled by a single-RF SM scheme. It is demonstrated in our simulations that upon increasing the number of transmit antenna elements, the SM scheme is capable of outperforming the classic MIMO systems, under the assumptions of a low number of RF chains and realistic pulse shaping.