On the Mutual Information and Constellation Design
Criterion of Spatial Modulation MIMO Systems
† Shuaishuai Guo, † Haixia Zhang
† ‡
School of Information Science & Engineering,
Shandong University,
Jinan, Shandong, 250100, China
Abstract—The mutual information of spatial modulation (SM)
based multiple input and multiple output (MIMO) systems with
arbitrary number of transceiver antennas is investigated. An
expression of the system mutual information is derived. The
expression is not in a closed form and may lead to difficulties
when trying to optimize the mutual information. To solve this,
based on Jensen Inequality we propose an approximation for
mutual information, which is in a closed form. We show that the
approximation is accurate in both low and high SNR regimes.
In addition, based on the approximated version of the system
mutual information, two constellation design critera are proposed
to maximize the system mutual information with finite alphabet.
Numerical results show that both of the two criteria perform
well.
I. I NTRODUCTION
Recently, there is a growing interest in applying a low-
complexity technique named spatial modulation (SM) into
multiple antennas transceiver designs. Rather than employ-
ing all the transmit antennas for transmission, SM achieves
spatial multiplexing by exploiting one single antenna at any
time, therefore causes no inter channel interference (ICI) and
synchronization problems. In SM, information bits are divided
into two separate parts: one part is used for antenna selection;
the other part is mapped into traditional signal constellation
point. As a result, the indices of transmit antennas are exploited
as an additional dimension for multiplexing.
As one of the promising modulation techniques, the con-
cept of SM has been developed into various forms, such as
space shift keying (SSK) [1], generalized spatial modulation
(GSM) [2], antenna subset modulation (ASM) [3], information
guided channel hopping (IGCH) [4], etc. A summary of these
schemes can be seen in the tutorial paper [5]. In this con-
tributed paper [5], Renzo et al offer a comprehensive overview
of the state of art in SM for generalized multiple-input
multiple-output (MIMO) technologies. In recent literature, SM
is extensively analyzed in the maximum transmission rate,
transmitter and receiver design, error performance, etc. For
instance, in [6], a framework for error performance analysis
of SM MIMO systems is proposed and the upper bound of the
average bit error probability (ABEP) of SM based multiple
input single output (SM MISO) systems is derived. In [7],
the optimal detector for SM MIMO systems is derived and
analyzed. All these works pay no attention on the mutual
information and capacity of SM MIMO systems. To the best
of our knowledge, only a few enlightening work on mutual
information and capacity analysis has been done in [4], [8].
978-1-4799-5832-0/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE
‡ Jia Zhang, † Dongfeng Yuan
School of Information Science & Engineering,
Shandong Normal University
Jinan, Shandong, China, 250014
1 1
2 2
Active
0110...001 SM
Mapper M
H M y
Antenna
Indice
Demapper
Detector
x = [0,0,L xi , L ,0]T
Nt Nr
Fig. 1: The SM MIMO system block diagram.
[4] firstly proposed and analyzed IGGH in terms of outage
capacity and ergodic capacity by assuming Gaussian inputs.
Although Gaussian inputs are optimum, they can never be
realized in practical communication systems, leading to sub-
stantial performance degradation [9], [10], [11]. [8] considers
practical discrete inputs and derives an expression of the
mutual information. It is worth mentioning that both the work
in [4] and [8] is done based on the assumption of single receive
antenna, i.e. SM MISO systems. Therefore, mutual information
of SM based MIMO systems is still an open problem. In this
work, we develop an SM MIMO systems oriented information-
theoretic framework to compute the mutual information with
finite alphabet inputs. To maximize the obtained mutual in-
formation, we afterwards develop an adaptive constellation
design criterion (A-CDC) and an maximizing average pairwise
distance constellation design criterion (MAPD-CDC) for SM
MIMO systems.
In this paper, we use the following notations. Uppercase
letters denote matrices, lowercase boldface letters represent
vectors and lowercase non-boldface letters stand for scalars.
The field of complex numbers is denoted by C and the field
of nature numbers by N. Ex {·} refers to the expected value
of random variable x. || · || denotes the Euclidean norm. The
superscripts (·)T and (·)† stand for transpose and conjugate
transpose operations, respectively.
II. S YSTEM M ODEL AND P ERFORMANCE A NALYSIS
We consider an SM based MIMO system equipped with
Nt transmit antennas and Nr receive antennas, as illustrated
in Fig. 1. The baseband input-output relationship can be given
by
y = Hx + v. (1)
where y ∈ CNr ×1 is the received signal, H ∈ CNr ×Nt is the
complex channel matrix, x ∈ CNt ×1 is the base band input
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 Proceedings of the 2014 IEEE ICCS

signal vector and v ∈ CNr ×1 is the additive white Gaussian Substitute (3),(4),(6) and (7) into (5), and the mutual
noise with zero mean and covariance matrix σ 2 INr . information between x and y can be expressed as
Under the assumption of SM MIMO system, the channel I(x; y|H = H)
matrix can be stated as H = [h1 , h2 , · · · , hNt ] with hi ∈ 
1 t 
MN M Nt
CNr ×1 , i = 1, · · · , Nt . Since SM is employed, the baseband −dm1 ,m2
= log2 (M Nt ) − Ev log2 e ,
input signal could be further denoted as M Nt m =1
1 m2 =1
x = [0, 0, · · · , xi , · · · , 0]T , (2) (8)


where xi , i = 1, · · · , Nt , represents the single nonzero element where dm1 ,m2 = σ −2
||H(xm1 − xm2 ) + v||2 − ||v|| . 2
x ∈ C and is launched from the ith transmit antenna with
power Ex {xx† } = P . In the limit of very low signal to noise ratio regime (SNR,
γ = σP2 ), i.e. γ → 0, by assuming a fixed noise power σ 2 = 1,
A. Mutual Information with Finite Alphabet we have
Let we assume that (p + q)-bits information is transmitted lim I(x; y|H = H)
γ→0
at a time slot, p-bits for antennas selection and q-bits for
= lim I(x; y|H = H)
discrete constellations mapping such as M -ary pulse-amplitude P → 0
σ2 = 1
modulation (PAM), phase shift keying (PSK) modulation, or 
1 t 
quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) of cardinality M i.e., MN M Nt
−dm1 ,m2
Nt = 2p , p ∈ N and M = 2q , q ∈ N. The finite alphabet with = log2 (M Nt ) − lim Ev log2 e ,
P → 0 M Nt m =1
cardinality M is denoted as SM = {S1 , S2 , · · · , SM }. Assume σ2 = 1 1 m2 =1
that the information bits to be transmitted are randomly gen- (9)
erated with P(ρ = 0) = P(ρ = 1) = 12 , ∀ρ, the probability
that the symbol Sk is chosen to be sent out is P(x = Sk ) = Obviously, to get the limit of (9), the exponential terms in
1 the second term of (9) should be analyzed first. When m1 =
M , k = 1, 2, · · · , M and the probability that the ith antenna
is selected to transmit is P(i = l) = N1t , l = 1, 2, · · · , Nt . m2 , considering P → 0 and σ 2 = 1, it can be easily got
||H(xm1 − xm2 ) + v||2 → ||v||2 , resulting that dm1 ,m2 → 0. If
For a given channel realization, the probability density m1 = m2 , we can get ||H(xm1 − xm2 ) + v||2 = ||v||2 , hence
function (PDF) of the corresponding received signal y when dm1 ,m2 = 0. Therefore, (9) can be written as
sending x writes
lim I(x; y|H = H) = 0 (10)
1 ||y − Hx||2 γ→0
P(y|x, H = H) = exp(− ). (3)
(πσ 2 )Nr σ2
In the limit of very high SNR regime, similarly, the limit
Define new vectors, xm ∈ CNt ×1 , m = 1, 2, · · · , M Nt and of the mutual information can be written as
let xm = x(k−1)Nt +l = [0, 0, · · · , Sk , 0, · · · ]T represent
 lim I(x; y|H = H)
lth position γ→+∞
sending Sk at the lth position of xm . Therefore, the probability = lim I(x; y|H = H)
of sending xm is P(x = xm ) = P(x = Sk )P(i = l) = M1Nt . P → +∞
σ2 = 1
Then, the PDF of the corresponding received signal y can be = lim I(x; y|H = H) (11)
written as m1 = m2 , ||H(xm − xm ) + v||2 → ∞
1 2
m1 = m2 , ||H(xm − xm ) + v||2 = ||v||2
P(y|H = H) = Ex {p(y|x, H = H)} 1
σ2 = 1
2

1 t
MN
(4) = log2 M Nt .
= P(y|xm , H = H).
M Nt m=1
In general, the mutual information in (8) has no closed form
The mutual information between the input and output expression. Although the value can be got through numerical
signals can be given by [12] simulations, it is difficult to maximize the mutual information
based on the present expression, which we always expect to.
I(x; y|H = H) = H(y|H = H) − H(y|x, H = H) Thus in the following part, we derive a lower bound of the
(5)
= H(y|H = H) − H(v), mutual information, and based on the obtained lower bound
we set an approximated expression for the mutual information
where the entropy of the received vector y can be expressed with finite signal alphabets.
as
H(y|H = H) = Ey {− log2 (P(y|H = H))}
 B. Lower bound and Approximation
=− P(y|H = H) log2 (P(y|H = H))dy,
CNr Jensen’s Inequality (JI) [13] is well known in solving lower
(6) bound of expression in (6). Employing JI in (6), we have
and the entropy of noise is
Ey {− log2 (P(y|H = H))} ≥ − log2 (Ey {P(y|H = H)}).
H(v) = Nr log2 (πeσ 2 ). (7) (12)

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 Proceedings of the 2014 IEEE ICCS

⎧ M N 2 ⎫
⎨ t 1 ||y−Hxm ||2
⎬
−
H(y|H = H) ≥ − log2 e σ2 dy
⎩ CNr (πσ 2 )Nr M Nt ⎭
m=1
⎛ ⎞
 (14)
⎜ 1 
M 
Nt M Nt ||y−Hxm ||2 ||y−Hxm ||2 ⎟
= − log2 ⎜ dy⎟
− 1 − 2
e σ2 e σ2
⎝ (πσ 2 )2Nr (M Nt )2 Nr
⎠.
m1 =1 m2 =1  C  
Θ

Therefore, lower bound of entropy of the received vector y at Apparently, the difference ΔI(x;y|H=H) between
given channel realization can be written as I(x; y|H = H) and I(x;  y|H = H) for very low or
  very high SNR is given by
H(y|H = H) ≥ − log2 P(y|H = H)P(y|H = H)dy e
N ΔI(x;y|H=H) = Nr log2 ( ) (21)
C r  2
2
= − log2 P(y|H = H) dy .
CNr Owing to this, we propose an approximation I(x; y|H =
(13) H) to the mutual information I(x; y|H = H) and have
Substituting (4) into (13) leads to a loose bound of the entropy I(x; y|H = H) ≈ I(x; y|H = H)
of y as shown in (14), where the integral Θ can be calculated (22)
 y|H = H) + ΔI(x;y|H=H)
= I(x;
as [14]
Further substituting the (18) into (22), the approximation
I(x; y|H = H) can be rewritten in a closed form expression
 π Nr †
as
1
H † H(xm1 −xm2 )  
Θ= e− 2σ2 (xm1 −xm2 ) . (15) − 2σ12 Δ†x H † HΔx
2 Δx ∈D e
I(x; y|H = H) = − log2 . (23)
Further apply (15) in (14) and define Δx = xm1 − xm2 , we (σ 2 )Nr (M Nt )2
achieve the loose lower bound
 − 2σ12 Δ†x H † HΔx
 C. Constellation Design Criterion for SM MIMO Systems
Δx ∈D e
H(y|H = H) ≥ − log2 , For traditional MIMO systems with finite-size inputs, it
(2π)Nr (σ 2 )2Nr (M Nt )2 (16) has been proved that the mutual information is a function
   of the distance between different constellation points [15]. In

H(y|H=H) SM MIMO, where the input distribution is constrained to be
where the set of all difference vectors D is given by of finite-size and to belong to the special subset of spatial
modulation (i.e., the inputs vector has, at most, one nonzero
D = {Δx |Δx = xm1 − xm2 , ∀m1 , m2 = 1, · · · , M Nt }. (17) entry), the relationship between the mutual information and
the finite alphabet set SM is described in (8), where we can

Within (16), a rather loose lower bound H(y|H = H) has been see that the difference vectors Δx = xm1 − xm2 , ∀m1 , m2
 y|H = H) of
formulated, which leads to a lower bound I(x; are the key factors that dominate the mutual information
the mutual information I(x; y|H = H). And it can be easily get that those difference
vectors are determined by the finite alphabet set SM . As a
 y|H = H) = H(y|H
I(x;  = H) − H(v) result, how to design the finite alphabet set SM to maximize
 − 2σ12 Δ†x H † HΔx
 the mutual information becomes a problem for practical SM
Δx ∈D e
(18) MIMO systems. Unfortunately, we should say that it is hard
= − log2 .
( 2e )Nr (σ 2 )Nr (M Nt )2 to analyze the impact of SM on the mutual information
theoretically because of the non-closed form of (8). Hereafter,
Given a fixed noise power σ 2 = 1, in the limit of very small we will analyze the constellation design based on the obtained
 y|H = H)
and very large transmit power P , the limits of I(x; approximated mutual information I(x; y|H = H) instead of
can be easily got. Since it is obvious that all exponential terms I(x; y|H = H).
in numerator of (18) tend to be one for P → 0 and zero for Since the PDF of Δx , P(Δx ) = (M N 1
2 , ∀Δx ∈ D,
t)
P → ∞ and m1 = m2 , the limits can be written as
I(x; y|H = H) in (23) can be rewritten as
! "
lim  y|H = H) = Nr log2 ( 2 )
I(x;
1 † †
I(x; y|H = H) = 2Nr log2 σ − log2 (EΔx e− 2σ2 Δx H HΔx )
P → 0 e (19)
σ2 = 1 ! 1 2 2
"
≤ 2Nr log2 σ − log2 (EΔx e− 2σ2 ||H|| ||Δx || )
lim  y|H = H) = log2 (M Nt ) + Nr log2 ( 2 ).
I(x; ≤ 2Nr log2 σ − log2 (e− 2σ2 ||H||
1 2
EΔx {||Δx ||2 }
)
P → ∞ e (20)
σ2 = 1 (24)

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Given the power Ex (||x||2 ) = Ex {xx† } = P and the finite 8

alphabet size M , according to the first line of (24), to get the I(x; y|H), Nt = 4, Nr = 4
maximum I(x; y|H = H), the adaptive constellation at given 7  y|H), Nt = 4, Nr = 4
I(x;
channel realization H can be designed by I(x; y|H), Nt = 4, Nr = 2
! " 6

Mutual Information(bit/s/Hz)
1 † †  y|H), Nt = 4, Nr = 2
I(x;
SM (H)|A−CDC = arg min EΔx e− 2σ2 Δx H HΔx . 5
Ex {xx† }=P,x∈SM I(x; y|H), Nt = 8, Nr = 4

(25) 4
 y|H), Nt = 8, Nr = 4
I(x;
Since the constellation design criterion (CDC) in (25) is a func-
tion of channel realizations, the design criterion can be applied 3
for any channel conditions only if the channel is known. We
2
therefore name it adaptive CDC (A-CDC). Considering it is
computational complex to calculate the constellation according 1
to (25), especially when the channel is fast fading, we then
propose another criterion, named maximizing the average 0
−20 −15 −10 −5 0 5 10 15 20
pairwise distance constellation design criterion (MAPD-CDC), SNR(dB)
designed according to the third line of (24) to maximize the
upper bound of I(x; y|H = H) instead of maximizing the Fig. 2: Mutual information with QPSK symbols as inputs of
I(x; y|H = H) itself. Then the criterion can be expressed as 4 × 4, 4 × 2 and 8 × 4 SM MIMO systems
# $
SM |M AP D−CDC = arg max EΔx ||Δx ||2 .
Ex {xx† }=P,x∈SM
(26) 6
In this way, the constellation design is independent of the
channel conditions. With this criterion, the computational 5
complexity can be greatly reduced, but in the same time the
Nt=16,Nr=16
system performance in terms of the mutual information will be
Mutual Information(bit/s/Hz)

4
degraded as well. Future, based on the two optimization criteri-
ons, the constellation design problem for SM MIMO systems
3
can be solved through a heuristic search algorithm, such as Nt=4,Nr=4
Genetic algorithm, particle swarm optimization algorithm, etc.
2
Nt=2,Nr=2

III. N UMERICAL R ESULTS I(x; y|H), RS

1
I(x; y|H), MAPD-CDC
To show the system performance and validate the criteria
I(x; y|H), A-CDC
proposed, we simulate the mutual information of SM MIMO 0
system in our proposed information-theoretic framework over −20 −15 −10 −5 0 5 10 15 20
SNR(dB)
independent Rayleigh fading channel. All results are obtained
based on Monte Carlo simulations over 1000 independent Fig. 3: Mutual information with Different CDCs
channel realizations.
Fig. 2 depicts the mutual information and the derived
approximated mutual information of 4 × 4, 4 × 2 and 8 × 4 SM
MIMO systems when employing QPSK at the transmit side. transmit antennas. Moreover, when both the two systems have
Results show that the derived approximation I(x; y|H) approx- the same mutual information I(x, y|H) = 4(bit/s/Hz), 8 × 4
imates the mutual information I(x; y|H) well, especially in the SM MIMO system saves about 5dB transmit power compared
very low and very high SNR regime, where to 4 × 4 SM MIMO system. From this aspect, we conclude
! " that increasing the number of transmit antennas in SM MIMO
I(x; y|H) = EH I(x; y|H = H) , (27) systems can save transmit power consumption in achieving
the same mutual information. Of cause, this conclusion has
and ignored the power consumed by radio frequency switches and
I(x; y|H) = EH {I(x; y|H = H)} . (28) insertion losses.

It is also shown by Fig. 2 that the mutual information is mono-
tonically increasing until it hits the upper bound log2 (M Nt ).
Comparing 4 × 4 SM MIMO system to 4 × 2 SM MIMO
system, we can see that as the number of receive antennas
increases, the maximum mutual information does not change,
but it saves 8dB transmit power to achieve the maximum
mutual information. Further compare 8 × 4 SM MIMO system
with 4 × 4 SM MIMO system, we can see that 8 × 4 SM
MIMO system outperforms 4×4 SM MIMO system in term of
maximum mutual information by 1 (bit/s/Hz). This is because
8 transmit antennas offers more antenna selection gain than 4
To show the mutual information of SM MIMO systems
when employing different constellation design criteria, by set
M = 4 we first generate 1000 SM s finite alphabet sets
randomly guaranteeing Ex {xx† } = P, x ∈ SM , the total set
(1) (2) (1000)
is denoted as Stotal = {SM , SM , · · · , SM }. Based on
the two proposed constellation design criteria, A-CDC and
MAPD-CDC, the proper finite alphabet is chosen for data
transmission. The numerical results are shown in Fig.3. For
comparison purpose, the mutual information when employing
random finite alphabet set selection is also included in Fig.3.
It is shown that the finite alphabet selection using A-CDC

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 Proceedings of the 2014 IEEE ICCS

and MAPD-CDC outperforms the Random Selection (RS) in
terms of mutual information. And the system with A-CDC
offers larger mutual information than that with MAPD-CDC
as analyzed, but the performance loss is trivial compared the
reduced computational complexity, at least for small number
of transmit antennas.
IV. C ONCLUSION
In this paper, we have proposed an SM MIMO systems
oriented information-theoretic framework and derived an ex-
pression of the mutual information based on the proposed
frame work. Since the expression of mutual information can
is not in a closed form, we further proposed a closed form
approximation for the mutual information with finite input
alphabets. Numerical results show that the approximated mu-
tual information can approach the real value well especially
in very high and low SNR regimes. Moreover, based the
obtained approximated expression of mutual information, two
constellation design criteria, A-CDC and MAPD-CDC, have
been proposed to maximize the system mutual information
with finite alphabet. Numerical results show that both of the
two criteria perform well, especially MAPD-CDC is of lower
complexity while keeps low performance degradation. We also
simulated the mutual information of 4 × 4, 4 × 2 and 8 × 4
SM MIMO systems over Rayleigh channels, results show that
although increasing the number of receive antennas does not
improve the maximum mutual information, it saves transmit
power in achieving the same mutual information.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The work presented in this paper was supported in part
by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.
61371109, 61271229), the Outstanding Youth Fund of Shan-
dong province with No. JQ201315 and the New Century
Excellent Talents from the Ministry of Education of China
(NCET-11-0316).

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