On the Performance of IRS-Assisted SSK and RPM over Rician Fading Channels

Abstract: This paper presents the index modulation, that is, the space-shift keying (SSK) and reflection phase modulation (RPM) schemes for intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-assisted wireless network. IRS simultaneously reflects the incoming information signal from the base station and explicitly encodes the local information bits in the reflection phase shift of IRS elements. The phase shift of the IRS elements is employed according to local data from the RPM constellation. A joint detection using a maximum-likelihood (ML) decoder is performed for the SSK and RPM symbols over a realistic fading scenario modeled as the Rician fading channel. The pairwise error probability over Rician fading channels is derived and utilized to determine the average bit error rate. In addition, the ergodic capacity of the presented system is derived. The derived analytical results are verified and are in exact agreement with Monte-Carlo simulations.