Subcarrier-Index Modulation Aided OFDM - Will It Work?

The achievable performance of subcarrier-index modulation (SIM) is analyzed in terms of its minimum Euclidean distance, constrained and unconstrained average mutual information, as well as its peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR). Our performance investigations identify the beneficial operating region of the SIM scheme over its conventional orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) counterpart, hence providing general design guidelines for the SIM parameters. More specifically, an SIM scheme is shown to be beneficial for the scenario of a relatively low transmission rate below 2 b/s/Hz. In addition, we demonstrate that the PAPR of the SIM scheme is comparable with that of its OFDM counterpart under the idealized simplifying assumption of having Gaussian input symbols.