RIS-assisted differential transmitted spatial modulation design

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a novel reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-assisted wireless communication design called the RIS-assisted differential transmitted spatial modulation (DTSM) scheme. The encoding process of the differential spatial modulation (DSM) is integrated into the DTSM scheme, where only one transmit antenna is activated per time slot to transmit the $M$-ary phase shift keying (PSK) modulation symbol through the RIS. Due to the detection characteristics of DSM, the bit error rate (BER) performance remains satisfactory without requiring channel state information estimation, thereby enhancing robustness. The RIS application in the proposed scheme mitigates the effects of shadow area fading by adjusting the phase of the reflected signals to improve the signal-to-noise ratio at the receiver. In simulation results by comparing to other RIS-assisted spatial modulation schemes, we can find that the proposed DTSM scheme demonstrates good BER performance across various scenarios, including Nakagami-$m$ fading, which also indicates its potential for practical applications.