Analysis of Average Bit Error Rate for OFDM-IM Systems with Hardware Impairments over Nakagami-m and Weibull Fading Channels

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing together with index modulation (OFDM-IM) is a brilliant key alternative to the traditional orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) schemes for future communication technologies whereby it has high spectral and energy efficiency. However, there are still key issues that need to be adressed to evaluate possible applications in practical systems. Accordingly, we investigate the performance of OFDM-IM systems over Nakagami-m and Weibull fading channels that suffer from transceiver hardware impairments (HWIs) in this paper. Specifically, a maximum likelihood (ML) detector is applied for OFDM-IM-based transmission and the system performance is analyzed under the effect of HWIs considering average bit error rate (ABER) by utilizing computer simulations. The obtained results show that the HWIs have serious destructive effects on the overall system performance.