TRANSACTIONS ON EMERGING TELECOMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGIES

Trans. Emerging Tel. Tech. (2014)

Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI: 10.1002/ett.2905

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Quadrature spatial modulationperformance analysis

and impact of imperfect channel knowledge
Raed Mesleh1*, Salama S. Ikki2 and Hadi M. Aggoune1
1 Electrical Engineering Department and Sensor Networks and Cellular System (SNCS) research center, University of Tabuk, PO

Box: 741, 71491 Tabuk, Saudi Arabia

2 Department of Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada

ABSTRACT
In this paper, a new multiple-input multiple-output transmission technique called quadrature spatial modulation (QSM)
is proposed and analyzed in the presence of imperfect channel estimation at the receiver. In QSM, conventional spatial
constellation diagram of spatial modulation (SM) system is expanded to include both in-phase and quadrature components.
As such, significant enhancement in the overall spectral efficiency is achieved while retaining all inherent advantages of
SM technique, such as inter-channel interference avoidance, single radio frequency chain transmitter and low receiver
complexity. It is shown that significant performance enhancements can be achieved as compared with SM, Alamouti, and
spatial multiplexing systems. Besides, the impact of Gaussian imperfect channel estimation on the performance of QSM
system is studied. A closed-form expression for the pairwise error probability of generic QSM system is derived and used to
calculate a tight upper bound of the average bit error probability over Rayleigh fading channels with perfect and imperfect
channel knowledge. Also, simple asymptotic expression is derived and analyzed. Obtained Monte Carlo simulation results
highlight the accuracy of the conducted analysis. Copyright 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
*Correspondence
R. Mesleh, Electrical Engineering Department and Sensor Networks and Cellular System (SNCS) Research Center, University of
Tabuk, PO Box: 741, 71491 Tabuk, Saudi Arabia.
E-mail: rmesleh.sncs@ut.edu.sa
Received 6 June 2014; Revised 20 August 2014; Accepted 12 October 2014

1. INTRODUCTION
In recent years, the demand for wireless services and
the number of mobile subscribers have seen tremendous
growth. This growth motivated researchers to develop new
transmission technologies, protocols, and network infrastructure solutions to enhance the achievable throughput and
the overall spectral efficiency. The scarcity of the wireless spectrum is the main factor that hinders the vision
for wireless access everywhere anytime, and perhaps the
toughest challenge that wireless research has to undertake. Overcoming this challenge requires innovations in
various areas including novel ways for spectrum sensing
and reuse, mechanisms for using higher frequencies such
as 60 GHz and the visible light, novel ideas for dealing
with interference, multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO),
and generally more efficient protocols and systems [112].
MIMO technology promises a linear gain in capacity with
the number of antennas [13], but it is yet to be adopted on
a scale commensurate with its true potential [1416].
Copyright 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Space modulation techniques, as space shift keying

(SSK) [17] and spatial modulation (SM) [18], are MIMO
methods that use the multiple transmit antennas in an innovative fashion. Transmit antennas are considered as spatial
constellation points and utilized to carry additional information bits to boost the overall spectral efficiency. Each
antenna index is utilized to carry additional information
bits and a spatial multiplexing (SMUX) gain of base-two
logarithm of the overall number of transmit antennas is
achieved. Besides, activating single transmit-antenna at a
time eliminates inter-channel interference, relaxes interantenna synchronization requirements, reduces receiver
complexity, and allows the use of a single radio frequency chain at the transmitter. In addition, it has been
shown that space modulation techniques enhance error performance with moderate number of transmit antennas as
compared with other conventional MIMO techniques. As
well, it is demonstrated that these techniques are more
robust to channel imperfections, such as spatial channel
correlation and channel estimation errors, as compared
with other MIMO techniques, because the probability of

R. Mesleh, S. S. Ikki and H. M. Aggoune

error of space modulation systems is not determined by

the actual channel realization, rather by the differences
between channels associated with the different transmit
antennas [2, 3, 1922].
Nonetheless, a major criticism of space modulation techniques is that the data rate enhancement is proportional to
the base-two logarithm of the number of transmit antennas. This is unlike other SMUX techniques, where data rate
increases linearly with the number of transmit antennas.
To overcome this limitation, several attempts were made to
enhance the overall spectral efficiency of such techniques.
In [21], a generalized SM algorithm is proposed where a
combination of transmit antennas is activated at each time
instant. A similar algorithm is proposed in [22] for SSK
system. However, the performance of these systems are
shown to be slightly worse than the conventional SM/SSK
systems. Another algorithm proposed in [23] creates a new
constellation diagram for SSK system by combining real
and imaginary symbols. The scheme is shown to perform
nearly the same as conventional SSK system with similar
system configuration but with double spectral efficiency.
This paper relies on the idea in [23] to propose a new
high spectral efficiency MIMO scheme called quadrature
spatial modulation (QSM) [24]. The authors in [23] proposes a new SSK scheme called Bi-SSK modulation.
Bi-SSK extends the constellation diagram of conventional
SSK system by considering dual antenna constellation; one
to transmit real symbol and another to transmit an imaginary one. It is shown in [23] that a negligible performance
penalty is achieved but with double the data rate. QSM
is a method for processing the signal before transmission.
In QSM, the spatial constellation symbols are expanded
to in-phase and quadrature components. One component
transmits the real part of a signal constellation symbol
and the other transmits the imaginary part. In conventional
SM system, these two parts are transmitted from a single
transmit antenna to avoid inter-channel interference (ICI)
at the receiver input. Similarly, in QSM system, ICI is
also avoided entirely because the two transmitted data are
orthogonal and modulated on the real part and the imaginary part of the carrier signal. But with the additional
transmission of base-two logarithm of the number of transmit antenna bits. The proposed Bi-SSK system in [23] is
shown to be a special case of QSM and called quadrature
SSK (QSSK) for convenience. In QSSK, a group of data

bits activates one antenna to transmit the real symbol C1,

and another group activates another or the same antenna to
transmit the quadrature symbol Cj. Combining all possible antenna combinations and symbols gives exactly the
proposed constellation diagrams of [23].
Detailed analysis of QSM system with imperfect channel knowledge at the receiver is conducted, and results are
compared with conventional SM, Alamouti, and SMUX
systems under similar spectral efficiency. The pairwise
error probability (PEP) of QSM is computed in closed form
without resorting to Monte Carlo numerical simulations,
which besides being computationally intensive, only yield
limited insights about the system performance and cannot
be exploited for a systematic optimization of it. In addition, a tight upper bound on the overall average bit error
probability (ABEP) is provided. As well, an approximate
expression for the error probability is obtained to clearly
see the impact of different system parameters on the overall
performance.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follow: In
Section 2, QSM system and channel models are presented.
Performance analysis is presented in Section 3. Results
are discussed in Section 4, and the paper is concluded in
Section 5.

2. SYSTEM AND CHANNEL

MODELS
A baseband system model for QSM/QSSK systems is
depicted in Figure 1. A generic Nt  Nr MIMO configuration is considered with Nt and Nr being the number of
transmit and receive antennas, respectively. 

At one particular time instant, m D log2 Nt2 M data
bits are to be transmitted, with M D log2 .q/ denoting
the modulation order of arbitrary M-quadrature amplitude
modulation (M-QAM)/ phase shift keying (M-PSK) or
other constellation diagrams. The incoming data bits are
processed and partitioned into three groups. Two groups
each with log2 .Nt / bits are mapped into spatial constellation symbols. The other log2 .M/ bits is mapped into
a signal constellation symbol. The signal constellation
symbol, x, is further decomposed to its real, x< , and imaginary, x= , parts. The real part is transmitted from one
transmit antenna among the existing Nt transmit antennas, where the active antenna index is determined by the

Figure 1. System model of the quadrature spatial modulation (QSM)/quadrature space shift keying (QSSK) systems highlighting the
required transmitter/receiver blocks for baseband transmission in the presence of imperfect channel knowledge at the receiver.

Trans. Emerging Tel. Tech. (2014) 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/ett

R. Mesleh, S. S. Ikki and H. M. Aggoune

first log2 .Nt / bits. Similarly, the imaginary part is transmitted by another or the same transmit antenna depending on
the other log2 .Nt / bits. However, the transmitted real and
imaginary parts are orthogonal representing the in-phase
and the quadrature components of the carrier signal. The
signal at the antenna input and after baseband to bandpass
conversion can be written as



Es h`< x< C jh`= x= C n, `< , `= D 1, 2,    , Nt
(2)
where Es denotes the transmitted energy.
Let the estimate of the hr,t channel be hQ r,t . We assume
that hr,t and hQ r,t are jointly ergodic and stationary Gaussian processes. Further, assuming orthogonality between
the channel estimate and the estimation error, we have

i
h
s D Re xej2fc t D x< cos .2fc t/ C x= sin .2fc t/ (1)

hr,t D hQ r,t C ehr,t

which is the same for either SM or QSM systems for

certain carrier frequency, fc . In SM system, the complete
data symbol, x, is transmitted from one antenna determined by log2 .Nt / bits to avoid ICI. However, in QSM,
an additional log2 .Nt / bits are transmitted by utilizing
an additional spatial constellation dimension. While, ICI
is entirely avoided and single radio frequency chain at
the transmitter can still be used as in the case of SM.
But, the transmit antennas should be synchronized to start
transmission simultaneously.
An example for QSM bits mapping and transmission
is given in what follows assuming 4  4 MIMO system
and 4-QAM modulation. The number of data bits that
can be transmitted at one particular time instant is m D
bits. Assume that3the following incoming
log2 .Nt2 M/ D 6 2
7
6
7
data bits, m D 6
4 0 1 00 1 1 5 are to be transmitted.
log2 .M/Clog2 .Nt2 /


The first log2 .M/ bits 0 1 , modulate a 4-QAM symbol, x D 1 C j. This symbol is divided further into
real and imaginary parts,
 x< D 1 and x= D C1. The
second log2 .Nt / bits 0 0 modulate the active antenna
index used, `< D 1 to transmit x< D 1 resulting in the

T
transmitted

 vector s< D 1 0 0 0 . The last log2 .Nt /
bits, 1 1 modulate the active antenna index, `= D 4,
used to transmit x= D C1, resulting in the vector s= D

T
0 0 0 C1 . The transmitted vector is then obtained by
adding the real and imaginary vectors, s D s< C js= D

T
1 0 0 j . In case of QSSK system, the first antenna
transmits the real symbol C1 while the second antenna
transmits the imaginary symbol Cj.
The vector, s, is transmitted over an Nr  Nt wireless
channel H and experiences an Nr -dim additive white Gaussian noise, n. H is a complex channel matrix with Nr  Nt
dimension. Its element hr,t denotes the complex channel
path gain between the tth transmit antenna and rth receive
antenna, and h`< is the `< th column of H, that is, h`< D

T
h1,`< ,    , hNr ,`< . The channel entries are assumed to
be i.i.d. complex Gaussian random variables with zero
T

mean and variance h2 . The n D n1 , n2 ,    , nNr is the
complex Gaussian noise vector with zero mean and variance N0 (both real and imaginary parts having a doublesided power spectral density equal to N0 =2). The received
signal at the output of the channel is given by
Trans. Emerging Tel. Tech. (2014) 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/ett

yD

(3)

where ehr,t is the channel estimation error, which is complex Gaussian with zero mean and variance e2 . Note that
e2 is a parameter that captures the quality of the channel
estimation and can be appropriately chosen depending on
the channel dynamics and estimation schemes. Assuming
orthogonal pilot channel estimation sequences, the estimation error reduces linearly with increasing the number of
pilots.
With this, the optimum ML decoder for QSM system at
the receiver is given by
 p 
h
i
2


`O< , `O= , xO < , xO = D arg min y Es hQ `< x< C jhQ `= x= 
`< ,`=
x< ,x=

D arg

min

`< ,`= ,x< ,x=

kgk2  2< yH g
(4)

./H

where
is the Hermitian of avector or a matrix, k  k
p
denotes the norm, and g D Es hQ `< x< C jhQ `= x= . The
detected antenna indices `O< and `O= along with the detected
data symbols xO < and xO = are used to retrieve the original
information bits.
In case of QSSK system, (4) reduces to
h


i
2
p 


`O< , `O= D arg min y  Es hQ `< C jhQ `= 
`< ,`=

(5)

In the next section, the PEP of ML-decoder QSM system

is computed in closed form. Also, a tight upper bound on
the overall ABEP is provided, and an approximate expression for the error probability is obtained. The obtained
asymptotic equation clearly highlight the impact of different system parameters on the overall performance and can
be used for future optimization studies.

3. PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS
Let gO D


p Q
Q
Es hO `< xO < C jhO `= xO = , then



Pr .g ! gO jH/ D Pr dg ! dgO jH
r
E 


s QO
h`< xO <  hQ `< x<
D Pr w >
2
1
r 
2
Es OQ

h`= xO =  hQ `= x= A
Cj

2
(6)

R. Mesleh, S. S. Ikki and H. M. Aggoune

where
( r


Es  Q
Q
h`< x<  hO `< xO <
2
!
r 

Es Q
QO
Cj
h`= x=  h`= xO =
2
!)
r

Es 
e x< C je`= x= C n

2 `<

(7)

Note that w is a complex Gaussian random variable with

variance
w2

r 
E 

2
Es

s
QO
QO
Q
Q
h`< x<  h`< xO < C j
h`= x=  h`= xO =
D 4
2


2
2
 Es
 Es
N0
C e jx< j2 C e jx= j2 .

2
4
4
(8)

Es .h2 e2 /
,
2N0 Ce2 Es

if hQ `< hQO `< , hQ `= hQO `=

Es .h2 e2 /

4N0 C2e2 Es

:
Q
Q
if hQ `< D hO `< , hQ `= hO `= or hQ `< hQO `< , hQ `= D hQO `=
(12)
Thus, the average PEP can be written as

N D

w D 2<

<

1
0
s
N
1@
=2
A,
1
PN e .gn ! gO k / D
N
2
1 C =2

(13)

and the ABEP of the QSM system can be evaluated using

the following asymptotically tight union bound,
m

Pb D

2
2
1 XX 1
PN e .gn ! gO k / errn,k
2m
k

(14)

nD1 kD1

Hence, the conditional PEP in (6) can be written as

s
Pr .g ! gO jH/ D Q

jA C jBj2


4N0 C 2e2 Es jx< j2 C jx= j2

!
(9)

0v
u Nr 1
uX
k A ,
Pe .gn ! gO k / D Q @t

where
 



Es < hQ `< x<  = hQ `= x= 




Q
Q
< hO `< xO < C = hO `= xO =



p  
B D Es = hQ `< x< C < hQ `= x= 




Q
Q
= hO `< xO <  < hO `= xO =
AD

where errn,k is the number of bit errors associated with the

corresponding PEP event.
If the receiver is equipped with Nr receive antennas, the
instantaneous PEP is given by

(10)

and the average PEP can be written as [26, 27],

PN e .gn ! gO k / D Nr

NX
r 1

kD0

and Q.x/ denotes the Q-function.

Please note that x< and x= are the real and imaginary
parts of the complex symbol constellation, that is, both are
real values. Hence, A and B are independent Gaussian random variables, and  D A C jB is a complex Gaussian
random variable. Thereby, the Q-function variable in (9),
which is the squared magnitude of , jj2 is an exponential
random variable with mean [25]

8 

 jx< j2 C jOx< j2 C jx= j2 C jOx= j2 ,

QO
QO

Q
Q

if h`< h`< , h`= h`= 

 jx<  xO < j2 C jx= j2 C jOx= j2 ,

<
QO
OQ
Q
Q
if h`< D h`< , h`= h`= 
N D
2

 jx< j2 C jOx< j C jx=  xO = j2 ,

QO
QO

Q
Q
if

 h`< h`< , h`= D h`=

 jx<  xO < j2 C jx=  xO = j2 ,

:
if hQ `< D hOQ `< , hQ `= D hOQ `=
E .h2 e2 /
where  D 4N C2 2s E .jx
2
2 .
0
< j Cjx= j /
e s
In case of QSSK system,

(15)

kD1

1
2

where  D

1

Nr  1 C k
k

N
=2
N
1C=2

1   k (16)


. Taking the Taylor series

of (16) and ignoring higher-order terms gives the following

asymptotic average PEP of the QSM system,
PN e .gn ! gO k / D

2Nr 1 .Nr C 0.5/

p
.Nr /

 Nr
1
,
N

(17)

where a diversity gain of Nr is clearly obvious in (17).

Three different scenarios can be discussed based on the
definition of e2 as given in what follows.

(11)

(1) Fixed e2 : Without loss of generality, let us consider

the case where hQ `< hQO `< , hQ `= hQO `= . Then, the
asymptotic average PEP can be written as
4Nr 2Nr 1 .Nr C 0.5/
p
.Nr /


2
3Nr
1 2
2
x< j2
2 e jx< j C jO
5 .
 4

h2 e2 jx< j2 CjOx< j2 Cjx= j2 CjOx= j2
(18)

PEP 

Trans. Emerging Tel. Tech. (2014) 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/ett

R. Mesleh, S. S. Ikki and H. M. Aggoune

It can be seen that (18) is not a function of Es =N0 ,

that is, increasing the signal to noise ratio (SNR) does
not improve the error performance, and the diversity
gain is zero. In other words, error floor in the ABEP
performance will be noticed.
1
(2) Variable channel estimation error, e2 D E =N
: If the
s
0
channel estimation error is inversely proportional to
the SNR, the asymptotic PEP can be simplified to

10

10-1

ABEP

10-2

Nr
4Nr 2Nr 1 .Nr C 0.5/
1
PEP 
p
Es =N0
.Nr /


2
3Nr
1 C 12 jx< j2 C jOx< j2
5 ,
4 
h2 jx< j2 C jOx< j2 C jx= j2 C jOx= j2
(19)
where a diversity gain of Nr is clearly noticed in
this case. Note that increasing the SNR enhances
the transmitted pilots power as well and reduces the
channel estimation error, which enhances the ABEP
performance of the system.
(3) Perfect channel estimation, e2 D 0: Assuming ideal
system where the channel is perfectly known at the
receiver simplifies the asymptotic PEP to
p

2
4

r C 0.5/
.Nr /

1
Es =N0

10-6
10-7

h2 jx< j2 C jOx< j2 C jx= j2 C jOx= j2

10

15

20

25

Figure 2. Analytical, simulation, and asymptotic quadrature spatial modulation (QSM) average error probability with two transmit antennas, four receive antennas and 4-QAM modulation in
the presence of imperfect channel estimation. Also and for sake
of comparison, performance of conventional spatial modulation
(SM) under similar system setup and with similar spectral efficiency and QSM with perfect channel knowledge are depicted
as well.
100

10-1

3Nr
5
(20)

Again, a diversity gain of Nr is achieved but the probability of error in (20) is less than that of (19) due to
the perfect knowledge of the channel.

4. NUMERICAL ANALYSIS AND

DISCUSSION
Performance evaluation of the proposed QSM technique is
presented in this section. Analytical and Monte Carlo simulation results are presented assuming perfect and imperfect
channel estimation at the receiver. In all results, the ABEP
is depicted versus the SNR. The SNR is defined as Es =N0 ,
with Es denoting the overall transmit power from all active
transmit antennas in all systems. For Monte Carlo simulation results, at least 106 symbols have been transmitted
to compute the ABEP for each SNR value. The channel
is assumed to be static for each frame, and a frame length
of 200 symbols is considered. Orthogonal Hadamard pilot
symbols are inserted at the beginning of each frame for
channel estimation purposes. A pilot sequences, each of
length Nh D Nt symbols, are transmitted simultaneously
from the multiple transmit antennas. Four receive antennas,
Nr D 4 are considered in all scenarios.
Results for 24 and 44 QSM systems are depicted
in Figures 2 and 3, respectively. The impact of imperfect channel knowledge at the receiver is evaluated and
Trans. Emerging Tel. Tech. (2014) 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/ett

SNR (dB)

Nr

10-4
10-5

10-2

ABEP

PEP 

4Nr 2Nr 1 .N

10-3

10-3

10-4

10-5

10-6

10

15

20

25

SNR (dB)

Figure 3. Quadrature spatial modulation (QSM) analytical, simulation, and asymptotic average error probability with four
transmit antennas, four receive antennas and using 4-QAM
modulation compared with conventional spatial modulation (SM)
scheme with similar spectral efficiency and under practical
channel estimation at the receiver.

compared with the case of perfect channel knowledge.

Analytical and asymptotic results are depicted as well
and compared with simulation results. Results demonstrate
close-match for a wide and pragmatic range of SNR values.
It is important to note that the considered Chernoff upper
bound is loose at low SNR but tightens at asymptotical values. Also in Figure 2, the performance of 24 conventional
SM scheme with 8-QAM modulation achieving similar
spectral efficiency as 24 4-QAM QSM system is depicted
in the figure. Obtained results demonstrate the significant
enhancement of the QSM system over the SM system,
where a gain of about 3 dB can be noticed in the figure.

R. Mesleh, S. S. Ikki and H. M. Aggoune

100

ABEP

10-1

10-2

10-3

-4

10

10

15

20

25

30

SNR (dB)

Figure 4. Quadrature spatial modulation (QSM) analytical and

simulation average error probability with four transmit antennas,
four receive antennas and using 4-QAM modulation for fixed e2
values. Two values of e2 of 10 and 15 dB are considered.

100
10-1
10-2

ABEP

Also, the impact of imperfect channel estimation on QSM

system is evident in the figure where performance degradation of about 2 dB can be noticed. Similarly, 16-QAM
44 SM system is depicted in Figure 3 and compared with
4-QAM 44 QSM system achieving similar spectral efficiency. Channel estimation errors are shown to degrade the
performance of QSM system by about 1 dB and significant
performance enhancements are achieved as compared with
conventional SM where a gain of about 5 dB can be noticed
in Figure 3.
Considering both figures, Figures 2 and 3, QSM
achieves higher performance enhancements with large
number of transmit antennas as compared with SM system.
With Nt D 2, QSM shows 3 dB better performance as compared with SM while 5 dB gain is reported with Nt D 4.
This can be attributed to two reasons. First, detection of
transmit antenna indices is robust to channel estimation
errors, as shown in [2830], because error is not related to
actual channel realizations, rather to the differences among
channel paths associated with different transmit antennas.
Second, QSM increases the spectral efficiency from 4 to
6 b/s/Hz by increasing the number of transmit antennas
from Nt D 2 to Nt D 4. However, SM system achieves
6 b/s/Hz spectral efficiency by increasing the number of
transmit antennas to 4, and the 4-QAM modulation order
should be increased to 16-QAM.
Another important advantage of QSM can be noticed
also in both figures. Increasing the achieved spectral efficiency from 4 to 6 b/s/Hz degrades the QSM performance
by only 1.5 dB. This is minor degradation performance as
compared with SM or other digital modulation schemes
where such spectral efficiency enhancement requires more
than 5 dB increases in SNR [26]. Note that these advantages are attained at almost no cost. The receiver complexity of QSM and SM schemes are equivalent and depends on
the considered spectral efficiency. Estimating the data symbols in (4) require two complex multiplications for each
receiving antenna and ML searches over m-dimensional
space diagram. Hence, the overall number of needed real
multiplications and divisions of QSM scheme is given by,

10-3
10-4
10-5
10-6
10-7

10

12

14

16

18

20

SNR (dB)

(21)

Figure 5. Performance analysis of quadrature space shift keying

(QSSK) system in terms of analytical, simulation, and asymptotic average error probability with two transmit antennas, four
receive antennas in the presence of imperfect channel knowledge. QSSK results are compared with conventional space shift
keying (SSK) system with similar spectral efficiency and QSSK
system with perfect channel knowledge.

which is equivalent to SM complexity [18, 21, 31]. It is

important to note that there exist several algorithms to
reduce the SM ML receiver complexity [31, 32] and similar
algorithms can be developed for QSM. While this will be
significant for future developments of the proposed QSM
idea, it clearly falls beyond the scope of this paper and will
be addressed in future works.
Impact of fixed e2 values on the performance of QSM
is shown in Figure 4. Two values of e2 are assumed, 10
and 15 dB. 44 QSM system with 4-QAM modulation
is considered. Fixing the channel estimation error variance means that increasing pilot symbols power would not
reduce the channel estimation error, and an error floor is
expected as can be seen in the figure. In fact, (18) is not
a function of the SNR and evaluating (18) will lead to the
expected ABEP value at high SNR.

Results for 24 QSSK system are shown in Figure 5

and for 44 QSSK system in Figure 6. Again, analytical, asymptotic, and simulation results demonstrate close
match for wide and pragmatic SNR values. Imperfect
channel knowledge is shown to degrade QSSK performance by about 11.5 dB. Also, QSSK system is shown to
outperform its counterpart SSK system by about 2 dB.
In the final set of simulation results, depicted in
Figures 7 and 8, QSM performance is compared with other
MIMO techniques, including QSSK, SMUX, and Alamouti scheme for two spectral efficiencies, m D 4 b/s/Hz
and m D 8 b/s/Hz and under the assumption of imperfect channel knowledge at the receiver. In SMUX system,
data are transmitted simultaneously from all existing transmit antennas, and ML decoder is applied at the receiver

D 8Nr 2m ,

Trans. Emerging Tel. Tech. (2014) 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/ett

R. Mesleh, S. S. Ikki and H. M. Aggoune

100

100

10-1

10-1

-2

10-2

10-3

ABEP

ABEP

10

-4

10

10-3
10-4

10-5
-5

10
10-6
10-7

10-6
2

10

12

14

16

18

20
10-7

SNR (dB)

Figure 6. Performance analysis of quadrature space shift keying

(QSSK) system in terms of analytical, simulation, and asymptotic average error probability with four transmit antennas, four
receive antennas in the presence of imperfect channel knowledge. QSSK results are compared with conventional space shift
keying (SSK) system and QSSK with perfect channel knowledge.

10

12

14

16

18

20

SNR (dB)

Figure 8. Simulation results for quadrature spatial modulation

(QSM), quadrature space shift keying (QSSK), spatial multiplexing (SMUX), and Alamouti schemes achieving a spectral
efficiency of m D 8 b/s/Hz under the assumption of imperfect
channel knowledge at the receiver.

100
10-1

ABEP

10-2
10-3
10-4
10-5
10-6
10-7

10

15

20

SMUX achieve the targeted high spectral efficiency with

moderate number of transmit antennas and signal modulation order. While, QSSK requires 16 transmit antennas and
Alamouti needs 256-QAM modulation order to achieve
this spectral efficiency. In addition, QSM system is shown
to outperform all other systems and 5 dB SNR gain can
be noticed when compared with QSSK and SMUX. This
is while, Alamouti scheme is shown to suffer significantly
from the use of very high modulation order to achieve the
targeted spectral efficiency and an ABEP lower than 101
cannot be achieved even at 20 dB SNR.

SNR (dB)

Figure 7. Simulation results of quadrature spatial modulation

(QSM), quadrature space shift keying (QSSK), spatial multiplexing (SMUX), and Alamouti schemes achieving a spectral
efficiency of m D 4 b/s/Hz under the assumption of imperfect
channel knowledge at the receiver.

to decode the received signal. Alamouti scheme considers

two transmit antennas and uses the optimum decoder proposed in [33] to decode the received message. In Figure 7,
results for all schemes achieving a spectral efficiency of
m D 4 b/s/Hz are depicted. The significant enhancement of
the proposed QSM system is evident in the figure. While
performing similar to SMUX and QSSK systems at low
SNR, 34 dB SNR gain is reported at high SNR values.
Besides, more than 6 dB SNR gain is achieved as compared
with Alamouti scheme at an ABEP of 104 . However, it is
anticipated that the Alamouti performance will enhance at
higher SNR values due to diversity gain, and it may outperform all other systems at very high, but impractical, SNR
values.
In Figure 8, performance comparison of all systems for
a spectral efficiency of m D 8 b/s/Hz is shown. QSM and
Trans. Emerging Tel. Tech. (2014) 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/ett

5. CONCLUSIONS
A new high spectral efficiency MIMO scheme, called
QSM, is reported in this paper and detailed performance
analysis in the presence of Gaussian imperfect channel
estimation is presented. Derived analyses are shown to
be accurate for a wide range of system parameters and
SNR values. The QSM system is also shown to be very
robust to channel estimation errors as compared with the
conventional SM system while achieving higher spectral
efficiency and maintaining most of its inherit advantages.
In addition, QSM is shown to outperform other MIMO
schemes such as SMUX and Alamouti for the same
spectral efficiency. As such, QSM is very promising for
deployment in future wireless systems. Reported results
demonstrate that the QSM system requires 35 dB less signal power as compared with conventional SM and SMUX
systems for the same error performance and spectral efficiency in the presence of imperfect channel knowledge
without any additional receiver complexity.

R. Mesleh, S. S. Ikki and H. M. Aggoune

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of SNCS
research center at University of Tabuk under the grant from
the Ministry of Higher Education in Saudi Arabia.

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