Performance analysis of space-shift keying in decode-and-forward multihop MIMO networks

In this paper, space-shift keying (SSK) is considered for multihop multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) networks. In SSK, only one among n_s = 2^m available transmit antennas, chosen on the basis of m information bits, is activated during transmission. We consider two different systems of multihop cooperation, where each node has multiple antennas and employs SSK. In system I, a multihop diversity relaying scheme is considered. In system II, a multihop multibranch relaying scheme is considered. In both systems, we adopt decode-and-forward (DF) relaying, where each relay forwards the signal only when it correctly decodes. We analyze the end-to-end bit error rate (BER) and diversity order of both the systems with SSK. For binary SSK (n_s = 2), our analytical BER expression is exact, and our numerical results show that the BERs evaluated through the analytical expression overlap with those obtained through Monte Carlo simulations. For nonbinary SSK (n_s > 2), we derive an approximate BER expression, where the analytically evaluated BER results closely follow the simulated BER results. We show the comparison of the BERs of SSK and conventional phase-shift keying (PSK) and also show the instances where SSK outperforms PSK. We also present the diversity analyses for SSK in systems I and II, which predict the achievable diversity orders as a function of system parameters