Performance of Multiple-Input Multiple-Output OFDM with Index Modulation

Multiple-input multiple output orthogonal frequency division multiplexing with index modulation (MIMO-OFDMIM) is novel multicarrier transmission technique which has been proposed recently as an alternative to classical MIMO-OFDM. In this scheme, OFDM with index modulation (OFDM-IM) concept is combined with MIMO transmission to take advantage of the benefits of these two techniques. In this work, the theoretical average bit error probability (ABEP) of the MIMO-OFDM-IM scheme with maximum likelihood (ML) detection is evaluated. A novel low complexity near-ML detector is proposed to reduce the decoding complexity of the brute-force ML detector. It has been shown via computer simulations that MIMO-OFDMIM scheme achieves considerably better error performance than classical MIMO-OFDM using ML/near-ML detectors for different MIMO configurations.