Cooperative Space Shift Keying Media-Based Modulation with Hybrid Relaying

In this paper, we propose two novel cooperative space shift keying media-based modulation (SSK-MBM) schemes. In the first scheme, a multiantenna source communicates with multiple relays and the destination by applying SSK-MBM, i.e., by altering the activated antenna and the on/off status of radio-frequency mirrors. Moreover, multiantenna relays have the capability of hybrid relaying, which means that the relays that correctly decode the source's signal take part in the transmission by applying the SSK-MBM technique; however, the relays that erroneously decode the source's signal amplify and forward their received signal to the destination. In the second scheme, we consider a novel cooperative SSK-MBM scheme with a hybrid relay selection in which a multiantenna source communicates with a selected relay and the destination by applying SSK-MBM. Error probability expressions for the proposed schemes are derived. Comprehensive computer simulations show that the derived analytical expressions are in agreement with the numerical results and show that the performance of hybrid relaying scheme is superior to that of the decode-and-forward as well as the amplify-and-forward techniques. It is shown that the proposed SSK-MBM systems outperform the conventional cooperative single-input multiple-output and spatial modulation systems for particularly high modulation orders and sufficient number of receive antennas at the destination.