Direct Transmit Antenna Selection for Transmit Optimized Spatial Modulation

To improve the performance of spatial modulation (SM) over correlated MIMO channels, transmit optimized spatial modulation (TOSM) has been proposed recently. It trades off traditional signal constellation diagrams with spatial constellation diagrams to minimize the average bit error probability (ABEP). After the optimum number of transmit antennas is determined, the specific antennas need to be carefully chosen from the entire array to provide a minimum ABEP. Like in conventional transmit antenna selection (TAS) schemes, the problem can be solved by an exhaustive search. However, this results in an unaffordable complexity especially when the spectral efficiency is high. In this paper, we propose a creative TAS approach for TOSM. Given a required number of antennas, the novel technique determines the selection solution based on circle packing. Simulation results show that for various channel correlations and spectral efficiencies, the proposed method achieves performance results close to exhaustive search with a gap of less than 0.3 dB. The complexity is reduced to an extremely low level.