Design Guidelines for Spatial Modulation

A new class of low-complexity, yet energy-efficient Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) transmission techniques, namely, the family of Spatial Modulation (SM) aided MIMOs (SM-MIMO), has emerged. These systems are capable of exploiting the spatial dimensions (i.e., the antenna indices) as an additional dimension invoked for transmitting information, apart from the traditional Amplitude and Phase Modulation (APM). SM is capable of efficiently operating in diverse MIMO configurations in the context of future communication systems. It constitutes a promising transmission candidate for large-scale MIMO design and for the indoor optical wireless communication while relying on a single-Radio Frequency (RF) chain. Moreover, SM may be also viewed as an entirely new hybrid modulation scheme, which is still in its infancy. This paper aims for providing a general survey of the SM design framework as well as of its intrinsic limits. In particular, we focus our attention on the associated transceiver design, on spatial constellation optimization, on link adaptation techniques, on distributed/cooperative protocol design issues, and on their meritorious variants.