Performance Analysis of Successive Decoding Based on Shadowing Side Information Under Non-Identical Composite Fading/Shadowing Channels

The performance of a distributed multiple input-multiple output (MIMO) system with single-antenna transmitters and a receiver with antennas is analytically investigated. Particularly, the transmitters simultaneously send their information streams to the receiver, operating under the spatial multiplexing regime. To this end, the receiver utilizes the zero forcing detection followed by the ordered successive interference cancellation technique. Composite fading/shadowed channels between receiver and transmitters are assumed, which are modeled as non-identical faded channels (i.e., Rayleigh multipath fading and Gamma distributed shadowing). The receiver sequentially detects and decodes the streams, starting from the strongest to the weakest, whereas symbol ordering is implemented with regards to shadowing side information without taking into account the fast varying multipath fading fluctuations. New closed-form expressions regarding the outage probability and the average symbol error probability are derived in terms of finite sums of the Meijer\´s- functions. Further, simplified expressions in terms of elementary functions are obtained in some specific asymptotic cases of interest, namely, in high signal-to-noise regions and when the receiver is equipped with very large antenna arrays (i.e., massive MIMO systems). Moreover, useful engineering insights are manifested, such as the diversity order of the considered system.