Upper Bounds for the Analysis of Trellis Coded Spatial Modulation over Correlated Fading Channels

Trellis Coded Spatial Modulation (TCSM) is a novel transmission technology for Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output (MIMO) systems, which has been recently proposed to improve the performance of Spatial Modulation (SM) over correlated fading channels. The fundamental principle of TCSM is to use convolutional encoding and Maximum-Likelihood Sequence Estimation (MLSE) decoding to increase the free distance between sequences of spatial constellation points, thus improving, especially over spatially correlated fading channels, the end-to-end system performance. In this paper, we propose tight analytical bounds for performance analysis of TCSM over correlated fading channels. In particular, the contributions of this paper are as follows: i) we propose two asymptotically tight (for high Signal-to-Noise-Ratios, SNRs) upper bounds for the analysis of uncoded SM schemes, which offer a better accuracy than already existing frameworks, ii) we propose a simple Chernoff bound for performance analysis of TCSM, which, although weak, can well capture the diversity order of the system, and iii) we propose an asymptotically tight (for high SNRs) true union bound for the accurate performance prediction of TCSM over correlated fading channels. Analytical frameworks and findings will also be substantiated via Monte Carlo simulations.