Low-Complexity Estimation for Spatially Modulated Physical-Layer Network Coding Systems

This paper proposes a low-complexity signal estimator at the relay node for a spatially modulated physical-layer network coding system. In the considered system, the two terminal nodes use spatial modulation to transmit their signals to the relay node during the multiple access phase. Based on the channel quantization method, we propose a low-complexity estimator which can detect both antenna indices and M-QAM symbols using successive interference cancellation (SIC). Moreover, we design signal constellations for a combined signal component at the relay for arbitrary M-QAM modulation. The obtained constellations allow further reduction of the computational complexity of the estimator. Performance evaluations show that the proposed estimator can achieve near-optimal error performance while requiring significantly less computational complexity compared with the maximum-likelihood detector, particularly with high-order modulation.