Low-Complexity Detection for Generalized Multistream Spatial Modulation

This work proposes a suboptimal detection algorithm for generalized multistream spatial modulation. Many suboptimal detection algorithms for spatial modulation use two-stage detection schemes where the set of active antennas is detected in the first stage and the transmitted symbols in the second stage. For multistream spatial modulation with large signal constellations the second detection step typically dominates the detection complexity. With the proposed detection scheme, the modified Gaussian approximation method is used for detecting the antenna pattern. In order to reduce the complexity for detecting the signal points, we propose a combined equalization and list decoding approach. Simulation results demonstrate that the new algorithm achieves near-maximum-likelihood performance with small list sizes. It significantly reduces the complexity when compared with conventional two-stage detection schemes.