Spatial Modulation for More Spatial Multiplexing: RF-Chain-Limited Generalized Spatial Modulation Aided MmWave MIMO with Hybrid Precoding

Abstract: The application of hybrid precoding in millimeter wave (mmWave) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems has been proved effective for reducing the number of radio frequency (RF) chains. However, the maximum number of independent data streams is conventionally restricted by the number of RF chains, which leads to limiting the spatial multiplexing gain. To further improve the achievable spectral efficiency (SE), in this paper we propose a novel generalized spatial modulation (GenSM) aided mmWave MIMO system to convey an extra data stream via the index of the active antennas group, while no extra RF chain is required. Moreover, we also propose a hybrid analog and digital precoding scheme for SE maximization. More specifically, a closed-form lower bound is firstly derived to quantify the achievable SE of the proposed system. By utilizing this lower bound as the cost function, a two-step algorithm is proposed to optimize the hybrid precoder. The proposed algorithm not only utilizes the concavity of the cost function over the digital power allocation vector, but also invokes the convex $\ell_\infty$ relaxation to handle the non-convex constraint imposed by analog precoding. Finally, the proposed scheme is shown via simulations to outperform state-of-the-art mmWave MIMO schemes in terms of achievable SE.