Energy-Efficient Index and Code Index Modulations for Spread CPM Signals in Internet of Things

The evolution of Internet of Things technologies is driven by four key demands: ultra-low power consumption, high spectral efficiency, reduced implementation cost, and support for massive connectivity. To address these challenges, this paper proposes two novel modulation schemes that integrate continuous phase modulation (CPM) with spread spectrum (SS) techniques. We begin by establishing the quasi-orthogonality properties of CPM-SS sequences. The first scheme, termed IM-CPM-SS, employs index modulation (IM) to select spreading sequences from the CPM-SS set, thereby improving spectral efficiency while maintaining the constant-envelope property. The second scheme, referred to as CIM-CPM-SS, introduces code index modulation (CIM), which partitions the input bits such that one subset is mapped to phase-shift keying symbols and the other to CPM-SS sequence indices. Both schemes are applied to downlink non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) systems. We analyze their performance in terms of bit error rate (BER), spectral and energy efficiency, computational complexity, and peak-to-average power ratio characteristics under nonlinear amplifier conditions. Simulation results demonstrate that both schemes outperform conventional approaches in BER while preserving the benefits of constant-envelope, continuous-phase signaling. Furthermore, they achieve higher spectral and energy efficiency and exhibit strong resilience to nonlinear distortions in downlink NOMA scenarios.

A Novel Spreading-Factor-Index-Aided LoRa Scheme: Design and Performance Analysis

LoRa is a widely recognized modulation technology in the field of low power wide area networks (LPWANs). However, the data rate of LoRa is too low to satisfy the requirements in the context of modern Internet of Things (IoT) applications. To address this issue, we propose a novel high-data-rate LoRa scheme based on the spreading factor index (SFI). In the proposed SFI-LoRa scheme, the starting frequency bin (SFB) of chirp signals is used to transmit information bits, while the combinations of spreading factors (SFs) are exploited as a set of indices to convey additional information bits. Moreover, theoretical expressions for the symbol error rate (SER) and throughput of the proposed SFI-LoRa scheme are derived over additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and Rayleigh fading channels. Simulation results not only verify the accuracy of the theoretical analysis, but also demonstrate that the proposed SFI-LoRa scheme improves both the bit error rate (BER) and throughput performance compared to existing high-data-rate LoRa schemes. Therefore, the proposed SFI-LoRa scheme is a potential solution for applications requiring a high data rate in the LPWAN domain.

A Sparsity Adaptive Algorithm to Recover NB-IoT Signal from Legacy LTE Interference

As a forerunner in 5G technologies, Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) will be inevitably coexisting with the legacy Long-Term Evolution (LTE) system. Thus, it is imperative for NB-IoT to mitigate LTE interference. By virtue of the strong temporal correlation of the NB-IoT signal, this letter develops a sparsity adaptive algorithm to recover the NB-IoT signal from legacy LTE interference, by combining $K$-means clustering and sparsity adaptive matching pursuit (SAMP). In particular, the support of the NB-IoT signal is first estimated coarsely by $K$-means clustering and SAMP algorithm without sparsity limitation. Then, the estimated support is refined by a repeat mechanism. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the developed algorithm in terms of recovery probability and bit error rate, compared with competing algorithms.