Relay-assisted multiuser MIMO-DQSM system for correlated fading channels

Abstract

This paper presents the performance evaluation of an amplify-and-forward (AF) relay-assisted multiuser multiple input–multiple output (MU–MIMO) downlink transmission system for correlated fading channels. The overall system performance was improved by incorporating a double-quadrature spatial modulation (DQSM) scheme. The bit error rate (BER) performance and detection complexity of the AF–MU–MIMO–DQSM system were analyzed and compared with those of a conventional AF–MU–MIMO system under the same conditions and parameters. The results showed that the correlated fading channel severely affected the performance of systems with higher spectral efficiency (SE). Considering an SE of 12 bpcu/user, the AF–MU–MIMO–DQSM system yielded a gain of up to 3 dB in BER performance compared with that of its conventional counterpart for the analyzed cases. In terms of detection complexity, the AF–MU–MIMO–DQSM system showed a reduction of up to 56 % compared with that of the conventional system for the optimal maximum likelihood detection criterion.