Low-Complexity Detection Algorithms for Spatial Modulation MIMO Systems

In this paper, the authors propose three low-complexity detection schemes for spatial modulation (SM) systems based on the modified beam search (MBS) detection. The MBS detector, which splits the search tree into some subtrees, can reduce the computational complexity by decreasing the nodes retained in each layer. However, the MBS detector does not take into account the effect of subtree search order on computational complexity, and it does not consider the effect of layers search order on the bit-error-rate (BER) performance. The ost-MBS detector starts the search from the subtree where the optimal solution is most likely to be located, which can reduce total searches of nodes in the subsequent subtrees. Thus, it can decrease the computational complexity. When the number of the retained nodes is fixed, which nodes are retained is very important. That is, the different search orders of layers have a direct influence on BER. Based on this, we propose the oy-MBS detector. The ost-oy-MBS detector combines the detection order of ost-MBS and oy-MBS together. The algorithm analysis and experimental results show that the proposed detectors outstrip MBS with respect to the BER performance and the computational complexity.