Subcarrier-Index Modulation OFDM

A new transmission approach, referred to as subcarrier-index modulation (SIM) is proposed to be integrated with the orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems. More specifically, it relates to adding an additional dimension to the conventional two-dimensional (2-D) amplitude/phase modulation (APM) techniques, i.e. amplitude shift keying (ASK) and quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM). The key idea of SIM is to employ the subcarrier-index to convey information to the receiver. Furthermore, a closed-form analytical bit error ratio (BER) of SIM OFDM in Rayleigh channel is derived. Analytical and simulation results show error probability performance gain of 4 dB over 4-QAM OFDM systems for both coded and uncoded data without power saving policy. Alternatively, power saving policy retains an average gain of 1 dB while using 3 dB less transmit power per OFDM symbol.