Outage Performance of Decode-and-Forward Cooperative Networks Over Nakagami- $m$ Fading With Node Blockage

In this paper, we present an analysis of the outage performance of noise limited uncoordinated decode-and-forward cooperative networks over Nakagami-m fading channels. We treat the general case of non-identically distributed internode and uplink fading channels with novel analytical closed-form expressions for the outage probability, derived for the case of integer-valued fading parameter over uplink. A node blockage model is incorporated to characterize dynamic macroscopic shadowing and node failure. We study the simultaneous effects of network size, average signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) over internode and uplink channels, fading severity, and probability of blockage on outage performance. We also study the asymptotic behavior of the outage probability in the high average SNR values and small blockage probabilities. The existence of an irreducible outage probability is identified for cases with node blockage. The results illustrate that the effect of blockage on outage performance is stronger in networks with larger size and at high SNR. The analytical results are confirmed by numerical simulations, and by analytical reduction to published results for special cases of system and channel parameters.