Achievable error rate performance analysis of space shift keying systems with imperfect CSI

In this letter, efficient closed-form formulas for the exact and asymptotic average bit error probability (ABEP) of space shift keying (SSK) systems are derived over Rayleigh fading channels with imperfect channel state information (CSI). Specifically, for a generic 2 × N_R multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system with the maximum likelihood (ML) detection, the impact of imperfect CSI is taken into consideration in terms of two types of channel estimation errors with the fixed variance and the variance as a function of the number of pilot symbols and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Then, the explicit evaluations of the bit error floor (BEF) and asymptotic SNR loss are carried out based on the derived asymptotic ABEP formula, which accounts for the impact of imperfect CSI on the SSK system. The numerical results are presented to validate the exactness of our theoretical analysis.