Spatial modulation and spatial multiplexing performance comparison over 3D mmWave communications

In this paper, the average bit error ratio (ABER) performance for two multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems, spatial multiplexing (SMX) and spatial modulation (SM), over a 3D statistical outdoor millimeter-wave (mmWave) channel model is presented and thoroughly discussed. Monte Carlo simulation results ascertained that SMX offers better ABER performance than SM for the same MIMO setup. Yet, SM is shown to offer about the same performance as SMX by increasing the number of transmit antennas. Furthermore, the advantages and disadvantages of each system in terms of power consumption, and computational complexity are discussed in the paper. It is shown, that SM offers up to 87.5% and 88.2% reduction in power consumption and computational complexity, respectively, as compared to SMX.