Spatial Modulation and Space-Time Shift Keying: Optimal Performance at a Reduced Detection Complexity

In this paper, we propose a comprehensive reduced-complexity detector both for hard-decision-aided as well as for the soft-decision-assisted Spatial Modulation (SM)/Space-Time Shift Keying (STSK). More explicitly, the detection of the SM scheme, which activates a single one out of M antennas to transmit a single LPSK/QAM symbol, may be carried out by detecting the antenna activation index m and the LPSK/QAM symbol s_t separately, so that the detection complexity may be reduced from the order of O(M · L) to the lower bound of O(M + log₂ L). However, the QAM aided STSK hard detection proposed in [1] results in a performance loss. Furthermore, the Max-Log-MAP algorithm proposed for soft STSK detection in [2] only takes into account the maximum a posteriori probabilities, which also imposed a performance degradation. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a novel solution for hard-decision-aided SM/STSK detection, which retains its optimal performance, despite its reduced detection complexity, when either LPSK or LQAM is employed. Furthermore, we propose the reduced-complexity Approx-Log-MAP algorithm conceived for the soft-decision-aided SM/STSK detector, in order to replace the suboptimal Max-Log-MAP algorithm.