Spatial modulation GFDM: A low complexity MIMO-GFDM system for 5G wireless networks

Generalized frequency division multiplexing (GFDM) is a nonorthogonal multicarrier transmission scheme proposed for future fifth generation (5G) wireless networks. Due to its attractive properties, it fulfills the requirements of the scenarios such as Internet of Things. On the other hand, multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) transmission is regarded as a key promising technology for 5G wireless networks. In this paper, we investigate the combination of GFDM and spatial modulation (SM) techniques. We construct the SM-GFDM system model and evaluate its error performance by comparing to spatial modulation - orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (SM-OFDM) in Rayleigh multipath fading channels. It is shown that SM-GFDM suffers a performance loss; however, due to combination of SM and GFDM, low complexity, high spectral efficiency, low out-of-band (OOB) emission, flexibility and time and frequency error toleration, which possibly surpass the small degradation in error performance, can be achieved. As a result, thanks to SM-GFDM, advantages of GFDM have been brought to MIMO application without increasing the system complexity.