Outage probabilities in shadowed fading channels using a compound statistical model

A compound probability density function (PDF) was recently proposed to describe wireless channels in short-term fading and shadowing. This three-parameter PDF is able to represent short-term fading such as Rayleigh, Rician, or Nakagami as well as long-term fading, generally represented by the lognormal distribution, thus providing a complete model for shadowed fading channels. Unlike the Suzuki or Nakagami-lognormal distributions commonly used to model the PDF in shadowed fading channels, this compound PDF results in a closed-form solution for the envelope or power of the received signal. Different levels of fading may be obtained by varying the parameters of this compound PDF. Outage probabilities in the absence of any cochannel interference (CCI) are evaluated using this model and compared with those obtained using a Nakagami-lognormal model. Results show excellent agreement between the two models. Outage probabilities are then evaluated in the presence of CCI from a fixed number of channels using this model. The results suggest that the analytical simplicity offered by the compound PDF will be very useful in the analyses of wireless systems in fading and shadowing.