Due to the skyrocketing demand on high spectral efficiency and high energy efficiency by continuous growth of internet of things (IoT), the fifth generation (5G) wireless communication networks have urged researchers to develop new transmission technologies. By equipping with massive antennas, conventional multi-input multi-output (MIMO) may achieve high spectral efficiency, however, fails to meet the requirement of high energy efficiency due to the dynamic power consumption with a large amount of full-active antennas. As a novel MIMO scheme, spatial modulation (SM) has emerged as an attractive candidate to achieve the spectral and energy efficiency fulfillment of the next generation wireless communications. Many rapid advances, research opportunities, and technical challenges are contiguously emerging. Motivated by these observations, this special issue aims to capture the state-of-the-art advances in SM, and foster new avenues for research in this area. The topics of interest include, but are not limited to the following:
- Adaptive modulation and coding for SM.
- Antenna and power allocation for SM networks.
- Mobility management for SM networks.
- Compressed-sensing theory for SM systems.
- Security provisioning in SM.
- Applications of SM in device-to-device communications, cooperative communications, 5G cellular networks, and visible light communications.
- Applications of SM in a new domain.
- Implementation: hardware and software issues.