A Space-Time Block Coded Spatial Modulation From (n,k) Error Correcting Code

In this letter, a high-rate space-time block coded (STBC) spatial modulation (SM) scheme called STBC-SM (n,k) is presented, in which according to the codewords of the (n,k) error correcting code (ECC), different pairs of antennas are activated to transmit STBC. For n_T = 2n transmit antennas, the STBC-SM (n,k) scheme can achieve the flexible transmission rates. Furthermore, two rotation angles are optimized to guarantee the transmit diversity of two for STBC-SM (n,k). Owing to the orthogonality of STBC, the new design enables a low-complexity maximum likelihood (ML) decoder. Simulation results are presented to verify the performance of the proposed scheme.