Single-carrier SM-MIMO: A promising design for broadband large-scale antenna systems

The main limitations of employing large-scale antenna (LSA) architectures for broadband frequency-selective channels include, but are not limited to their complexity, power consumption, and the high cost of multiple radio frequency (RF) chains. Promising solutions can be found in the recently proposed family of single-carrier (SC) spatial modulation (SM) transmission techniques. Since the SM scheme's transmit antenna (TA) activation process is carried out in the context of a SC-SM architecture, the benefits of a low-complexity and low-cost single-RF transmitter are maintained, while a high MIMO multiplexing gain can be attained. Moreover, owing to its inherent SC structure, the transmit signals of SC-SM have attractive peak power characteristics and a high robustness to RF hardware impairments, such as the RF carrier frequency offset (CFO) and phase noise. In this paper, we present a comprehensive overview of the latest research achievements of SC-SM, which has recently attracted considerable attention. We outline the associated transceiver design, the benefits and potential tradeoffs, the LSA aided multiuser (MU) transmission developments, the relevant open research issues as well as the potential solutions of this appealing transmission technique.