Massive MIMO With Few Number of Transmit Antennas: Space Shift Keying–Steiner Triple System

This paper proposes using Steiner triple system to create unique blocks that are used as constellation diagram for space shift keying (SSK) multiple–input multiple–output (MIMO) technique. The aim is to reduce the required number of transmit antennas to attain a target spectral efficiency without compromising the error performance. The developed system named as, Steiner–SSK (S–SSK), is shown to achieve substantial reduction in receiver computational complexity as compared to conventional SSK technique, driven mainly by the huge reduction in the required number of transmit antennas. As well, S–SSK is shown to achieve almost identical error probability as that of traditional SSK. In S–SSK system, triple antennas are activated at each time instant to emit and unformulated carrier signal and the overall transmit power is divided equally among active antennas.