The bit error rate (BER) performance of spatial modulation (SM) can be further improved by applying quasi-cyclic low-density parity-check (QC-LDPC) codes recommended in 5G to SM. It motivates us to propose a QC-LDPC coded SM (QC-LDPCC-SM) scheme, where SM signals are protected by QC-LDPC codes. To estimate the channel state information at the receiver, a novel iterative joint channel estimation and data detection based on variable block length (IJCEDD-VBL) for SM is presented. In standard 5G LDPC codes, the parity-check matrix contains multiple submatrices, and then we can construct two different QC-LDPC codes by suitably selecting the submatrices. Thus, the QC-LDPCC-SM scheme can be effectively extended to cooperative scenarios when deploying the generated LDPC codes at the source and relay, respectively. We develop an analytical approach for the BER performance of the proposed schemes. The simulation and theoretical results are in good agreement at high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Furthermore, the proposed coded cooperative scheme outperforms its corresponding non-cooperative counterpart and the existing scheme. The numerical results also validate the effectiveness of the proposed channel estimation scheme.

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