Spatial-Index Modulation Based Orthogonal Time Frequency Space System in Vehicular Networks

In this paper, a spatial-index modulation (SIM) based orthogonal time frequency space (OTFS) system, named SIM-OTFS, is proposed to enhance the effectiveness and the reliability of high mobility vehicular networks in intelligent transportation systems. The SIM-OTFS system adopts a three dimensional index modulation (IM) technique which utilizes the transmit antenna, delay, and Doppler indexes in the space and delay-Doppler domains, respectively, to achieve a higher transmission rate. Considering the characteristics of vehicular networks, we first present the SIM-OTFS system design and the corresponding signal processing. Then, we derive the average bit error rate (ABER) upper bound of the SIM-OTFS system by the union bound theory. Moreover, the diversity, the coding gain, and the complexity of the SIM-OTFS system are further investigated. Numerical results verify the theoretical analysis of the ABER and the diversity of the SIM-OTFS system, which shows the superiority of the SIM-OTFS system in the ABER performance over the multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) based OTFS (MIMO-OTFS) system. Meanwhile, the SIM-OTFS system realizes better performance than the spatial modulation (SM) and IM based orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (SM-OFDM-IM) system in high mobility vehicular communication with reasonable complexity sacrifice. Furthermore, the influence of the resolvable multipaths of the channel in vehicular networks on the ABER performance of the SIM-OTFS system is also illustrated.