Service outage based power and rate allocation for parallel fading channels

The service outage based allocation problem explores variable rate transmission schemes and combines the concepts of ergodic capacity and capacity versus outage for fading channels. A service outage occurs when the transmission rate is below a given basic rate r/sub o/. The allocation problem is to maximize the expected rate subject to the average power constraint and the constraint that the outage probability is less than /spl epsiv/. A general class of probabilistic power allocation schemes is considered in this problem. In an M-parallel fading channel model, the optimum power allocation scheme is derived and is shown to be deterministic except at channel states of a boundary set. The resulting service outage average rate is between the outage capacity times 1-/spl epsiv/ and the ergodic capacity.