On the reliability of outage models

It is common in wireless communication systems to predict system-level performance by means of outage threshold models, where the performance of the system is considered to be unacceptable whenever the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) drops below a given threshold. We measure the reliability of outage models in terms of the probability of error (bit or packet) given that the SINR exceeds the given threshold. Based on an exact interference analysis, we compute this quantity in the case of BPSK modulation systems operating in the Rayleigh fading environment, and investigate the effect of the number of interfering signals, and other PHY layer parameters on the reliability of the outage model. The results can be used to select the appropriate threshold level according to the required reliability for a given application.