A Low-Complexity Detection Scheme for Differential Spatial Modulation

Differential spatial modulation (DSM), which does not require the channel state information at the receiver, is an attractive alternative to its coherent counterpart. The optimal maximum-likelihood (ML) detector of the DSM system employs the classic block-by-block method for jointly detecting the activated antenna matrix (AM) and the modulation symbols, resulting in high computational complexity. In this letter, a low-complexity near-ML detector, which operates on a symbol-by-symbol basis, is proposed for the DSM scheme. Specifically, in each block, the index of the activated transmit antenna and modulation symbol in each time slot are first obtained, and then, these antenna indices are utilized to simply determine the index of the activated AM. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm is capable of offering almost the same performance as that of the ML detector with more than 90% reduction in complexity.