Multiple-input Multiple-output Techniques Research Articles

On Near-Optimal Codebook and Receiver Designs for MIMO-SCMA Schemes

Sparse code multiple access (SCMA) is a promising code-domain non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) technique that supports high-level connectivity. Through the combination of SCMA and multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) techniques, MIMO-SCMA schemes are capable of enhancing the overall spectral efficiency. This paper proposes novel MIMO-SCMA designs for both uplink and downlink Rayleigh fading channels. Rather than directly combining the SCMA and spatial multiplexing techniques presented in the previous literature, the proposed designs consider not only the frequency or time diversity, but also simultaneously include space diversity. Codebook design criteria for different transmission scenarios are respectively investigated, and a low-complexity codebook design algorithm is proposed based on the cross-entropy method. In addition, since the new designs suggest a dense factor graph, conventional message-passing algorithm (MPA)-based detectors are less suitable. Consequently, low-complexity MIMO-SCMA codeword detectors based on depth-first and breadth-first tree-search algorithms are respectively investigated. It is shown that the overall designs are able to simultaneously achieve a higher diversity order, enhanced BER results, and lower levels of detection complexity for both uplink and downlink scenarios, when compared to conventional MIMO-SCMA schemes.

Deep Learning (DL)-Based Channel Prediction and Hybrid Beamforming for LEO Satellite Massive MIMO System

Low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites are recognized as one of the most promising infrastructures for realizing global Internet of Things (IoT) services. With the explosive growth of user terminals (UTs) and data traffic, the integration of massive multiple-input multiple-output (mMIMO) techniques and LEO satellite communication systems has been regarded as a novel idea to enhance system capacity and realize global seamless high-speed interconnection. However, obtaining effective downlink channel state information (CSI) and establishing a simple and efficient hybrid beamforming mechanism are challenging tasks due to the limitations of objective factors, such as high dynamic, long delay, and low payload in LEO satellite scenarios. It is embodied in three aspects: 1) the untenable channel reciprocity in time division duplex (TDD) systems; 2) the training feedback costs and feedback delay in frequency division duplex (FDD) systems; and 3) the complex nonconvex optimization process faced by hybrid beamforming design. Driven by the performance advantages of the deep learning (DL) technology to deal with various problems in the field of physical layer communications, this article proposes to use a deep neural network (DNN) to solve the above challenges, and constructs SatCP and SatHB schemes for realizing downlink CSI acquirement and hybrid beamforming design, respectively. By deeply mining the potential correlation of the uplink-downlink channels between LEO satellites and UTs and exploring the mapping relationship between CSI and beamformers, the SatCP can assist LEO satellites to directly predict the future downlink CSI based on the observed uplink CSI with no need for downlink channel estimation, while the SatHB can easily generate the corresponding beamformers based on the downlink CSI predicted by the SatCP without requiring complex optimization. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed SatCP and SatHB can play an effective auxiliary role in LEO satellite mMIMO communication systems.

Low-complexity soft-output signal detector based on AI-SSOR preconditioned conjugate gradient method over massive MIMO correlated channel

Massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) techniques with a large number of antenna elements at base station (BS) have been proved as an alternative to provide potential opportunity to increase the spectrum and energy efficiency. However, in the system, there generally exists a spatial correlation effect due to insufficient antenna elements spacing and/or the lack of rich scattering at BS. The minimum mean square error (MMSE) method performs signal detection at the expense of large-scale matrix inversion operation. Thus, the conjugate gradient (CG) method has received a lot of attentions to realize the MMSE detection efficiently. Unfortunately, this efficiency can be compromised due to the ill-conditioned equalization matrix of MMSE method over the correlated channel environments. Moreover, the hard output signal detection exhibits a sharply degradation in performance for higher-order quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM). Therefore, the modern communication systems use the soft-output information, i.e., log-likelihood ratio (LLR) along with the forward error-correcting code (FEC) to achieve satisfactory performance. The LLR computation along with a higher-order QAM remains challenging due to the exhaustive search of symbol in the modulation constellation. In this paper, a low-complexity soft-output signal detector based on approximate inverse symmetric successive over-relaxation preconditioned conjugate gradient (AI-SSOR-CG-SOD) method is proposed to realize MMSE method detection for uplink multiuser massive MIMO correlated channel. In the proposed method, a new preconditioner, an AI-SSOR, which is based on the Neumann series approximation of the inverse of the conventional SSOR preconditioner is firstly developed to handle ill-conditioned matrix, and then incorporated with CG method to improve the convergence rate and performance. According to the characteristic of the Gray-coding that adjacent symbols in the constellation set have only one different bit, the constellation set is divided multiple times based on the bits of the inphase and the quadrature components of the symbol, which reduces the complexity of the LLR computation of the transmitted bits by avoiding the exhaustive search process. Simulation results show that the AI-SSOR preconditioner is robust against spatial correlation effect, and the proposed detector converges at 3 iterations. Simulation results also show that the proposed detector achieves a better trade-off between the complexity and the performance compared to other existing detectors.

Transmission of RF frequency by MIMO-LED system for underwater turbulent channel link

Abstract In this paper, an experimental system for underwater wireless optical communications (UWOC) is designed on a lab scale. An amplitude shift key (ASK) modulation is used for modulating the frequency of the white LED light with a multiple input-multiple output (MIMO) technique. A solar cell and a photodiode (BPX61) are used as a detector to receive these frequencies and then compare the performances. Water turbidity was increased to investigate the effect on received frequencies by adding different concentrations of the hydroxyls Al(OH)3 and Mg(OH)2. We examined the (Vpp, SNR, and Av) parameter values to assess the quality of the proposed link. The lowest values of SNR are achieved by adding the fifth concentration C5 of suspended particles to the water with a solar cell in the receiver. Furthermore, the highest values of SNR are obtained by adding the first concentration C1 with the use of the photodiode detector (BPX61). The results show that the solar cell cannot be sensitive to the signal after 75 kHz. While the photodiode (PBX61) can be sensitive to the signal up to 300 kHz at the five concentrations of suspended particles.

Performance Analysis of MIMO Techniques for a Pyramid Receiver in an Indoor MIMO-VLC System

In an indoor multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) visible light communication (VLC) system, line of sight (LoS) channel links are present between a light-emitting diode (LED) based transmitter and a photodetector (PD) based receiver. The PDs in the receiver are closely packed resulting in a high channel correlation. To overcome channel correlation and improve the performance of the MIMO-VLC system, angle diversity receivers (ADRs) are commonly employed. The channel matrix entries depend on the normal vectors of the PDs, which in turn depend on the elevation angle (EA) of the PDs. Thus, by having normal vectors pointing in different directions, the channel correlation can be considerably reduced. This paper considers a special type of ADR called pyramid receiver (PR) and employs a 4x4 MIMO-VLC system. In this paper, different MIMO algorithms such as repetition coding (RC) and spatial multiplexing (SMP) are considered to exhibit and compare the bit-error-rate (BER) performance of the fixed and variable EA MIMO-VLC systems. The results show that an SMP-employed MIMO-VLC system outperforms the RC-employed MIMO-VLC system. SMP results in an spatial multiplexing gain that varies linearly with the number of LEDs whereas RC does not yield any spatial multiplexing gain. To attain the same spectral efficiency i.e. 4 bit/s/Hz, a larger signal constellation size is required for RC employed MIMO-VLC system to achieve the same BER as of an SMP employed MIMO-VLC system. Similarly, the BER performance of variable EA MIMO-VLC systems is better as compared to fixed EA MIMO-VLC systems.

Design of Power Location Coefficient System for 6G Downlink Cooperative NOMA Network

Cooperative non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) is a technology that addresses many challenges in future wireless generation networks by delivering a large amount of connectivity and huge system capacity. The aim of this paper is to design the varied distances and power location coefficients for far users. In addition, this paper aims to evaluate the outage probability (OP) performance against a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for a 6G downlink (DL) NOMA power domain (PD) and DL cooperative NOMA PD networks. We combine a DL cooperative NOMA with a 16 × 16, a 32 × 23, and a 64 × 64 multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) and a 128 × 128, a 256 × 256, and a 512 × 512 massive MIMO in an innovative method to enhance OP performance rate and mitigate the power location coefficient’s effect for remote users. The results were obtained from Rayleigh fading channels using the MATLAB simulation software program. According to the outcomes, increasing the power location coefficients for the far user from 0.6 to 0.8 reduces the OP rate because increasing the power location coefficient for the far user decreases the power location coefficient for the near user, which results in less interference between them. In terms of the OP performance rate, the DL cooperative NOMA outperforms the NOMA. According to the findings, the DL cooperative NOMA OP rate outperforms the DL NOMA by a rate of 10−0.5. Whereas the 16 × 16 MIMO enhances the OP for the far user by 78.0 × 10−4, the 32 × 32 MIMO increases the OP for the far user by 19.0 × 10−4, and the 64 × 64 MIMO decreases the OP rate for the far user by 5.0 × 10−5. At a SNR of 10 dB, the 128 × 128 massive MIMO improves the OP for the far user by 1.0 × 10−5. The 256 × 256 massive MIMO decreases the OP for the far user by 43.0 × 10−5, and the 512 × 512 massive MIMO enhances the OP for the far user by 8.0 × 10−6. The MIMO techniques improve the OP performance, while the massive MIMO technology enhances the OP performance dramatically.

Investigating the effect of turbulence on IPI in a vehicular OCC system using PSF analysis

Optical camera communication (OCC) has emerged as a promising technology for wireless communication owing to its enormous potential benefits. However, turbulence conditions can restrict the feasibility of OCC systems that employ multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) techniques. In this work, we consider a vehicular MIMO-OCC system model in which the traffic light LEDs transmit data streams separately in parallel channels to the camera of a vehicle. We analyze the effect of turbulence on the inter-pixel interference (IPI) and bit error rate (BER) of the low speed vehicular MIMO-OCC system using the point spread function (PSF) of the optical channel. We introduce two performance metrics, i.e., digital number difference (DND) and the percentage of separable LEDs (PSLED) for strong and very strong turbulence conditions, respectively. The parameters of the camera and traffic light LEDs can affect the IPI caused by turbulence. It is shown that the DND of MIMO-OCC systems with larger focal length and LED size less affected by turbulence. In addition, smaller f-number and pixel size reduce the effect of turbulence on DND. It is also demonstrated that very strong turbulence can reduce PSLED for links longer than 20 m. Moreover, if turbulence reduces PSLED, increasing the LEDs’ intensity cannot efficiently reduce the BER in the MIMO-OCC system.

Novel space shift keying MIMO technique based on a Steiner triple system

A novel space shift keying (SSK) multiple–input multiple–output (MIMO) technique based on Steiner triple system is proposed and analyzed in this article. SSK attracted considerable research interest in the past few years driven by the several promised inherent advantages including low error probability, low computational complexity and a very simple hardware implementation with very low cost and power consumption. Yet, the spectral efficiency of SSK increases with a base two logarithm of the number of transmit antennas and high data rates are only viable with a massive and impractical number of transmit antennas. Alternatively, generalized SSK (GSSK) scheme is considered, where a combination of antennas is activated at each time instant. GSSK promises the use of arbitrary number of transmit antennas not necessarily a power of two integer. Also, GSSK can attain high data rate with low number of transmit antennas at the cost of substantial degradation in the error performance. In this study, a Steiner triple system is utilized to propose a tailored SSK scheme with substantial reduction in the required number of transmit antennas, without compromising the error probability. It is shown that the proposed Steiner–SSK (S–SSK) MIMO system achieves almost identical error performance to a conventional SSK system but with nearly 90% reduction in the number of transmit antennas. As well, the average bit error rate (ABER) of S–SSK is shown to outperform GSSK by at least 3dB. It is also reported that a S–SSK system accomplishes significant reduction in hardware cost, power consumption, and computational complexity as compared to conventional SSK scheme. Yet, GSSK is shown to marginally outperforms S–SSK in these metrics as it requires smaller number of transmit antennas per a target spectral efficiency.

Port and Radiation Pattern Decoupling of Dielectric Resonator Antennas

A new decoupling method is proposed in this article, which simultaneously realizes port and radiation pattern decoupling, namely, high isolation and undistorted radiation patterns, respectively. The proposed decoupling method shows its effectiveness in <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$1\times 2$ </tex-math></inline-formula> dielectric resonator (DR) antennas (DRAs) even with zero spacing. Conformal strips are attached to the sidewall of the DRs and parallel to the E-plane of the DRAs. Coupled from the resonant DR, the conformal strips can generate an induced current, thus forming an induced field inside the DR. It can be noted that, inside the two DRs, the DR resonant field and the strip induced field are antiphase and in-phase, respectively. Tuning the conformal strips can change the amplitude ratio and phase difference between the resonant and induced fields, which can be used to cancel the fields inside the DR based on the superposition principle. When one DR is excited, the field inside the other DR can be very weak. The DRs can then work at their fundamental TE <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$_{\delta 11}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> modes independently. Therefore, their radiation patterns are not distorted together with high port isolation. A new indicator, energy storage proportion (ESP), is proposed to evaluate the decoupling effect. It can be found that, when the ESP gets close to 1, the radiation patterns will be restored together with high isolation. To verify the idea, <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$1\times 2$ </tex-math></inline-formula> DRAs are designed, fabricated, and measured. A reasonable agreement can be observed between the measured and simulated results for both H- and E-plane decoupled cases. All the measured overlapping impedance bandwidths are larger than 6%, the envelope correlation coefficients are lower than 0.059, and the isolations are higher than 20 dB. It should be highlighted that all the radiation patterns in this article have been restored, useful for practical applications using multiple-input multiple-output techniques.

Cross Z-Complementary Sets for Training Design in Spatial Modulation

Spatial modulation (SM) is one special type of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) technique whose advantage is that only one radio-frequency (RF) chain is needed. Recently, the so-called cross Z-complementary pair (CZCP) was proposed as the SM training sequence. Optimal channel estimation performance over frequency-selective channels can be achieved since the CZCPs have the specific zero correlation zone (ZCZ) for auto-correlation and cross-correlation sums. However, the ZCZ width of the CZCP is theoretically upper bounded by half sequence length. In this paper, the CZCP is extended to the cross Z-complementary set (CZCS) to have larger ZCZ width which can be used in SM to combat larger delay spread. Several generic constructions of CZCSs with large ZCZ widths and flexible lengths are proposed in this paper. Even the perfect CZCS, whose ZCZ width has the maximum value, can be obtained. Numerical simulations demonstrate that the proposed CZCS-based training sequence can tolerate large delay spreads to improve the channel estimation performance in SM.

Energy-Efficient Cooperative MIMO Formation for Underwater MI-Assisted Acoustic Wireless Sensor Networks

The energy problem has become one of the critical factors limiting the development of underwater wireless sensor networks (UWSNs), and cooperative multiple-input–multiple-output (MIMO) technology has shown advantages in energy saving. However, the design of energy-efficient cooperative MIMO techniques does not consider the actual underwater environment, such as the distribution of nodes. Underwater magnetic induction (MI)-assisted acoustic cooperative MIMO WSNs as a promising scheme in throughput, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), and connectivity have been demonstrated. In this paper, the potential of the networks to reduce energy consumption is further explored through the joint use of cooperative MIMO and data aggregation, and a cooperative MIMO formation scheme is presented to make the network more energy efficient. For this purpose, we first derive a mathematical model to analyze the energy consumption during data transmission, considering the correlation between data generated by nodes. Based on this model, we proposed a cooperative MIMO size optimization algorithm, which considers the expected transmission distance and transmission power constraints. Moreover, a competitive cooperative MIMO formation algorithm that jointly designs master node (MN) selection and cooperative MIMO size can improve energy efficiency and guarantee the connectivity of underwater nodes and surface base station (BS). Our simulation results confirm that the proposed scheme achieves significant energy savings and prolongs the network lifetime considerably.

Multi-channel Optical Wireless Communication under the Effect of Low Electric Field

In this study, the multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) technique is proposed to mitigate the influence of an external electric field on the free space optical (FSO) communication. The main advantages of the proposed technique are: decrease the attenuation (decrease bit error rate BER), improve data transmission at all divergence angles, and increase the quality (Q-factor) (even when it decreases at higher divergence angles). The importance of these results can be used to solve the problem of electric discharges that occurs on power transmission lines that interfere with the optical wireless system.

Underwater wireless optical communication utilizing multiple input–multiple output (MIMO)-LED system for RF transmission with solar panel receiver

Abstract In this article, we designed an experimental system for underwater wireless optical communications. A function generation device sent frequencies (1–500 kHz) by amplitude shift key modulation technology, and these frequencies were loaded over light-emitting diode to propagate through a glass water tank with a length of 1 m, width of 40 cm, and height of 30 cm containing clean water of 80 L. These frequencies were received by a photodiode (BPX61), and the received signal was displayed through a digital storage oscilloscope device. Four techniques, single input–single output (SISO), single input–multiple output, multiple input–single output, and multiple input–multiple output (MIMO), were applied under the same optical conditions to know the quality of receiving the optical signal and the difference between them. Finally, the parameter values of signal-to-noise ratio, peak-to-peak voltage, and voltage gain were checked for each technique, and they were the lowest values for the SISO technique and the highest values for the MIMO technique.

Efficient solutions for target localization in asynchronous MIMO networks

Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) technique has been drawing extensive attention for its spatial diversity to enhance the performance in the target localization. Considering a fully asynchronous MIMO network, we propose a differential delay time (DDT) method for target localization. Semidefinite programming (SDP) and closed-form solutions (CFS) always converge to global optimum. To efficiently solve the DDT-based localization problem, we propose a global SDP (GSDP) solution to determine the target position. The complexity of the GSDP solution is high. Hence, we also develop a two-stage CFS (TSCFS) to reduce the complexity. We also prove that the performance of the TSCFS and GSDP solutions is able to attain the Cramér–Rao Lower Bound (CRLB) accuracy. The simulated results show that the GSDP solution provides comparable performance with the TSCFS at the low noise levels. Compared with the TSCFS, the GSDP shows its superiority in the estimation performance at the high noise levels.

Efficient Power Division Multiplexing in MIMO Systems

For the physical (PHY) layer in the 5th generation (5G) networks, there may be only time division multiplexing (TDM) and orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) as candidates to serve multiple information flows via a single wireless link. Such two multiplexing schemes require the timing/ frequency synchronizations strictly, which is not suitable for power division based medium access control (MAC) protocols, i.e., non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA). To address this, associating with multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) techniques, a power division multiplexing (PDM) scheme is proposed as an alternative option to MIMO-TDM/MIMO-OFDM. The proposed MIMO-PDM directly utilizes the division of transmit power to replace the conventional time-slot/sub-band for the different information flows. Thus, it owns high compatibility with NOMA which is a promising multiple access protocol in 5G. With regarding the quality of service (QoS) required by the information flows, this paper derives the optimum power division of MIMO-PDM in conditions of multiple-input single-output (MISO), single-input multiple-output (SIMO), and MIMO, respectively. Additionally, we study the optimum pre- and post-coding of MIMO when serving arbitrary number of information flows. The proposed optimization algorithms of MIMO-PDM own reasonable computational complexity which is not higher than the classic water-filling algorithms. Consequently, the proposed MIMO-PDM could efficiently achieve the optimum performance as well as ensure the QoS of multiple information flows.

Performance analysis of WDM MIMO RoFSO links for 5G applications

The soon to be deployed 5G systems are expected to cater an agglomerate of services at profuse data rates wirelessly. Radio over fiber (RoF) networks are the most suitable to implement such systems. In situations where the practical implementation of RoF systems are non-viable, radio over free space optical (RoFSO) links can be employed. The traditional wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) technology can be incorporated to multiply the data rates. However, the link performance may be degraded due to various atmospheric factors. This can be compensated using multiple input multiple output (MIMO) techniques. In this paper, the performance analysis of such a WDM RoFSO link for 5G frequencies is carried out. The work also presents quantitative performance comparison between single input single output (SISO) and MIMO RoFSO links for 5G systems which will be useful for researchers in this area. It is observed that, while WDM provides additional data capacity, it degrades the link performance under adverse weather conditions which can be counterbalanced using MIMO techniques.

Performance enhancement of 112 Gbps UWOC link by mitigating the air bubbles induced turbulence with coherent detection MIMO DP-16QAM and advanced digital signal processing

Underwater applications like real-time marine observations, video streaming, communication between underwater sensor nodes require spectrally efficient, high-speed (>100 Gbps) and reliable wireless links. In this paper, a coherently detected dual-polarization (DP)-16 quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) based system is proposed for turbulent underwater wireless optical communication (UWOC) which can transmit a data rate of 112 Gbps. The integration of digital signal processing (DSP) with a coherent system enables error-free transmission at longer distances. The proposed single-input single-output (SISO) system achieves reliable link ranges of 150 m, 55 m, 24 m, 10 m, and 5.5 m under the pure sea, clear ocean, coastal ocean, harbor I, and harbor II water conditions. Furthermore, spatial diversity with multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) techniques is utilized to mitigate turbulence-induced losses and path losses. At the receiver, the multiple received MIMO branches are combined with the equal gain combining (EGC) method. The transmission range improvements have been observed with 2 × 2 MIMO and 3 × 3 MIMO techniques over the SISO UWOC system. The power budget enhancement of 6 dBm is observed by utilizing a 3 × 3 MIMO configuration over 1 × 1 SISO configuration, and 3 dBm power budget enhancement has been observed in the case of a 2 × 2 MIMO configuration over 1 × 1 SISO configuration. The proposed system can further be utilized in real ocean scenarios to transmit time-sensitive information among diverse underwater sensor nodes.

Slow-Time FDA-MIMO Technique With Application to STAP Radar

Unlike the conventional phased array, the frequency-diverse array (FDA) employs a tiny frequency increment across the array elements, which is capable of providing range–angle–time-dependent beampattern, and thereby offers potential benefits in target localization and interference mitigation. Reported literature on FDA mostly focuses on its intrapulse (fast-time) property and ignores the interpulse (slow-time) feature induced by frequency offset. In this article, incorporating the neglected inherent slow-time coding feature, a novel slow-time FDA multiple-input multiple-output (FDA-MIMO) technique is proposed for the space-time adaptive processing (STAP) radar. The new coding scheme can separate transmitting (Tx) signals via slow-time Doppler filtering, and the problem of signal aliasing is tackled by appropriately designing the slow-time codes. At the receiving (Rx) side, two Rx schemes are devised for recovering range-dependent Tx degrees-of-freedom. Moreover, the relevant clutter rank and the rule for code design are derived in detail. The outstanding merits of the proposed slow-time FDA-MIMO STAP radar consist of the following: There is no specific restriction on the probing waveform; the negative effect of time-variant pattern is perfectly eliminated; and both the target localization accuracy and clutter suppression performance are superior over the state-of-the-art FDA radar systems. Numerical results corroborate the superiorities of the proposed waveform strategy for STAP application.

A Better Than Alamouti OSTBC for MIMO Backscatter Communications

Backscatter communications have received increasingly attention in Internet of Things (IoT) due to its advantages of requiring no internal battery and almost zero maintenance. However, the drawback of backscatter communications is that, its channel fades deeper than conventional channel. To improve the performance, multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) techniques have been investigated for backscatter communications. By considering duty cycle, a particular behavior of backscatter communications, as a new performance criterion, we propose a <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$2 \times 2$ </tex-math></inline-formula> orthogonal space-time block code for MIMO backscatter communications. The new code is a rotation of the classical Alamouti code, and in MIMO backscatter channels, this simple rotation will incur an improved duty cycle for both linear and nonlinear energy harvester models, as well as a same, or even better symbol error rate performance. We provide both rigorous mathematical proofs and numerical simulations to show the above results. An interesting thing is that, this new code does not outperform Alamouti code in conventional MIMO channels, which indicates that the space-time code design criteria for conventional channels is not the optimal one for backscatter channels, and existing space-time codes should be reconsidered and/or redesigned to achieve a higher performance in MIMO backscatter communications.

Experimental Analysis of Spatial Modulation Systems in Mixed LOS/NLOS Scenarios

Spatial modulation (SM) as a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) technique is a solution suitable which offers, with low system complexity and cost, improved spectral efficiency compared to single-input-single-output (SISO) systems. Moreover, the transmission chain is simplified which decreases energy consumption. This paper aims to analyze the SM system transmission under different line-of-sight/non-line-of-sight (LOS/NLOS) propagation scenarios. The analysis of the SM system performance is based on both simulations and experimental results and the bit error rate (BER) is tackled. Concerning the experimental results, two strategies are considered in order to configure the propagation channel. One method consists in constructing a controlled propagation environment. More precisely, the multipath channel’s Rician K-factor is imposed by configuring the power levels of the LOS and of the NLOS components. The second method consists in performing over-the-air transmissions on a realistic propagation channel. A channel sounding method allows us to measure the channel characteristics. The experimental results are confronted with the system-level simulation results, good agreement between experimental and simulation results are obtained. The results show that the SM system can maintain the performance in multipath propagation in the presence of indirect paths for both two proposed propagation environments.