A Reliability Analysis Framework for Space Modulation Techniques

Space modulation techniques (SMTs) have emerged as a family of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) transmitter designs that require a maximum of a single RF-chain. SMTs have been analyzed in the context of cost, power, and error performance in past studies and have shown to exert favorable advantages over traditional implementations such as spatial multiplexing (SMX). However, given future application requirements, analysis of the hardware also in the context of reliability becomes essential. In this work, an SMT hardware reliability analysis framework is devised using two quantitative analysis tools consisting of reliability block diagrams (RBDs) and Markov Chains. In addition, a comparative study using commercial component failure rates is performed to analyze how SMTs compare to each other.