Combining Nakagami-m Fading Links for High Availability in Wireless Networks

High resilience is expected to be a key component of next generation wireless networks enabling new services and applications in, e.g., vehicular communication, smart grids, and industrial automation. In this work, we analyze diversity concepts with a focus on the joint availability of power-controlled Nakagami-m fading links. For various fading environments, we investigate whether an optimal number of combined links in terms of total power consumption can be identified. Results show that, indeed, optimal operating points exist and huge power savings are possible when multiple lower power links instead of a single powerful link are used. The savings decrease with increasing fading parameter and decreasing outage probability. Furthermore, we present an optimization method based on min-plus convolution for determining the optimal power allocation among several selection combined Nakagami-m fading links with unequal fading parameters.