A Low-Complexity Maximum-Likelihood Detector for Differential Media-Based Modulation

Media-based modulation (MBM) uses radio frequency mirrors at the transmit antenna in order to create different channel fade realizations based on their ON/OFF status. These complex fade realizations constitute the channel modulation alphabet. This channel modulation alphabet has to be estimated a priori at the receiver for detection. In this letter, we present a differential MBM (DMBM) scheme which does not require estimation of channel modulation alphabet at the receiver for detection. Consecutive MBM blocks are differentially encoded. We propose a low-complexity maximum-likelihood detection algorithm for DMBM. Simulation results show that the DMBM has only about 2-4 dB performance loss compared with MBM with perfect knowledge of the channel alphabet