  In this paper, the bit error rate (BER) performance of spatial modulation
(SM) systems is investigated both theoretically and by simulation in a
non-stationary Kronecker-based massive multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO)
channel model in multi-user (MU) scenarios. Massive MIMO SM systems are
considered in this paper using both a time-division multiple access (TDMA)
scheme and a block diagonalization (BD) based precoding scheme, for different
system settings. Their performance is compared with a vertical Bell labs
layered space-time (V-BLAST) architecture based system and a conventional
channel inversion system. It is observed that a higher cluster evolution factor
can result in better BER performance of SM systems due to the low correlation
among sub-channels. Compared with the BD-SM system, the SM system using the
TDMA scheme obtains a better BER performance but with a much lower total system
data rate. The BD-MU-SM system achieves the best trade-off between the data
rate and the BER performance among all of the systems considered. When compared
with the V-BLAST system and the channel inversion system, SM approaches offer
advantages in performance for MU massive MIMO systems.
