A Transformer–LSTM Hybrid Detector for OFDM-IM Signal Detection

This paper addresses the signal detection problem in orthogonal frequency division multiplexing with index modulation (OFDM-IM) systems using deep learning (DL) techniques. In particular, a DL-based detector termed FullTrans-IM is proposed, which integrates the Transformer architecture with long short-term memory (LSTM) networks. Unlike conventional methods that treat signal detection as a classification task, the proposed approach reformulates it as a sequence prediction problem by exploiting the sequence modeling capability of the Transformer's decoder rather than relying solely on the encoder. This formulation enables the detector to effectively learn channel characteristics and modulation patterns, thereby improving detection accuracy and robustness. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed FullTrans-IM detector achieves superior bit error rate (BER) performance compared with conventional methods such as zero-forcing (ZF) and existing DL-based detectors under Rayleigh fading channels.