Multi-carrier DCSK With Hybrid Index Modulation: A New Perspective on Frequency-Index-Aided Chaotic Communication

To realize high energy-efficient, high spectrum-efficient, and high-throughput data transmission, a multi-carrier differential chaos shift keying communication system with hybrid index modulation, referred to as HIM-MC-DCSK system, is proposed in this paper. In the HIM-MC-DCSK system, we intelligently integrate the carrier-number-index technique and carrier-index technique into the MC-DCSK modulation in order to significantly boost the transmission efficiency in wireless communication systems. Especially, we use a pair of orthogonal signals to represent the active and inactive subcarriers in the HIM-MC-DCSK system so as to exploit all the subcarriers to transmit information bits. In addition, the theoretical bit-error-rate (BER) expressions of the HIM-MC-DCSK system are derived over additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and multipath Rayleigh fading channels. Also, the data rate, spectrum efficiency, energy efficiency, and complexity of the proposed system are carefully analyzed. Monte-Carlo simulations not only verify the accuracy of the theoretical analysis but also illustrate the superiority of the proposed system.