Downlink Multi-User Massive MIMO Transmission Using Receive Spatial Modulation

In this paper, we consider the downlink of a multi-user multiple-input-multiple-output system operating at the millimeter wave band in an outdoor environment. In this band, receive spatial modulation (RSM) schemes have been shown to achieve good spectral efficiency-energy consumption trade-off for the single-user case by exploiting new transceiver architectures that use a single radio-frequency (RF) chain at the user terminal (UT). In this work, we propose a novel RSM scheme for multiple RF chains at the UT. With the goal of maximizing the spectral efficiency (SE), we consider analog switches at the UT that select which antennas are active. To minimize the power consumption at the BS, we include analog switches that control the ON/OFF status of RF chains such that the SE is higher than a given threshold. Moreover, we extend the RSM concept to multiple users transmission. Specifically, we propose an algorithm that jointly optimizes the number of users, set of antennas and transmit power allocated to each user to maximize the sum SE. Simulation results show that RSM outperforms conventional modulation (no spatial symbols are transmitted) in terms of spectral and energy efficiency. Moreover, the proposed algorithms tightly approach the exhaustive search and outperform the prior art in terms of performance and convergence.