Multiple MIMO with joint block antenna number modulation and adaptive antenna selection for future wireless systems

Abstract

Multiple MIMO with joint block Antenna Number Modulation (M-MIMO-ANM) is proposed in this paper as a novel transmission method that exploits the features of both Massive Multiple Input Multiple Output (M-MIMO) and Antenna Number Modulation (ANM) concepts. In this scheme, the main purpose is to increase the number of additionally transmitted data bits, which are sent without any consumption in the bandwidth. To achieve this, the antenna elements of a large array are divided into blocks, whose numbers are utilized to convey additional data bits along with those bits sent by the number of antenna elements within each block as well as those sent by conventional modulation schemes (e.g., BPSK). The implementation of M-MIMO-ANM scheme relies on the idea of dividing the whole antenna array into blocks, where each block corresponds to a group of bits depending on the total number of available blocks, thus ANM concept is applied not only to the antennas within each block but also to the blocks forming the entire antenna array. This creates an opportunity to convey even more additional data bits, compared with the conventional ANM scheme, while there is a noticeable improvement in the reliability of data transmission. With all these dynamics, M-MIMO-ANM concept is a candidate to create a new perspective to the Internet of Things (IoT) applications, with its energy efficient, spectrum efficient, robust, and both data and channel dependent data transmission nature that comes from the properties of Massive MIMO and ANM. The introduced system is investigated, and its validity is proven, where analytical and simulation results in terms of the bit error rate (BER) and throughput of the system are given. The numerical computer simulations furthermore compare the performances of M-MIMO-ANM with MIMO-ANM to show its superiority, and the advantages of the concept are discussed. M-MIMO-ANM is promising a highly reliable and resilient system thanks to its cascaded simultaneous bit transmission by the different number of both antenna blocks and antenna elements within each block.