Effect of Generalized Multipath/Shadowing Channels on Fixed Rate Wireless Systems

The present work analyzes the channel capacity of digital communications in shadowed generalized fading environments. This is realized in the context of κ − μ shadowed channels for channel inversion with fixed rate and truncated channel inversion with fixed rate. In addition, the effects of the considered composite fading conditions are quantified by means of the channel quality estimation index, which constitutes an effective long-term performance criterion. To that end, simple analytic expressions are derived for the above performance measures, which are subsequently employed in analyzing the corresponding effects of generalized multipath fading and shadowing in different realistic scenarios. This leads to insights that can be useful in the practical design of emerging wireless set ups as it is shown that the severity of composite fading is significant also in the context of channel capacity. Indicatively, variations of over 30% are observed at different realistic severity levels.