VAMP-Based Iterative Equalization for Index-Modulated Multicarrier FTN Signaling

The spectrally efficient multicarrier faster-than-Nyquist (MFTN) signaling provides an efficient and robust solution for enhancing transmission rate and resisting channel impairments. In this paper, an evolutionary non-orthogonal physical waveform is proposed for simultaneously achieving high spectral and energy efficiency via combining MFTN signaling with index modulation (IM). Exploiting the implicit transmission of IM, the inactivated subcarriers alleviate the inherent two-dimensional interferences imposed by time-frequency packing in MFTN. Then, we develop a pair of iterative equalization algorithms based on vector approximate message passing (VAMP). For the first time-domain equalization (TDE), an extended constellation set is constructed for uniformly characterizing the activated and inactivated subcarriers. To further reducing the computational complexity, we establish a subcarrier-based segment-wise frequency-domain received signal model and accordingly develop low-complexity VAMP-based frequency-domain equalization (FDE) combined with interference elimination. Corroborated by simulations, the novel MFTN-IM waveform achieves superior bit error rate (BER) performance over benchmark waveforms in the high signal noise ratio (SNR) regions. Interestingly, while the proposed VAMP-TDE outperforms the proposed VAMP-FDE in BER performance, the latter is more competitive in balancing demodulation performance and computational complexity.