Virtual Spatial Channel Number and Index Modulation

This paper proposes a novel precoding-aided and efficient data transmission scheme called virtual spatial channel number and index modulation (VS-CNIM), which conveys extra data by changing both the number and index of active virtual parallel channels of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channels, obtained through the singular value decomposition (SVD) in each time slot. Unlike the conventional virtual spatial modulation (VSM), where extra data bits are transmitted only using index of active virtual parallel channels, the VS-CNIM scheme, depending on incoming information bits, transmits extra bits utilizing both the number and indices of active parallel channels along the bits carried by M-ary constellation symbols. Therefore, VS-CNIM provides significantly superior spectral efficiency (SE) compared to VSM. Considering the influence of imperfect channel estimation, a closed-form upper bound is derived on average bit error probability (ABEP). The asymptotic performance is also analyzed, which gives the coding gain and diversity order and describes error floor under the consideration of perfect and imperfect channel estimation, respectively. Monte Carlo simulations exhibit that the VS-CNIM scheme achieves considerably better error performance and high SE than precoding-aided SM (PSM) and VSM schemes.