Effects of Rician fading and branch correlation on a local-mean-based macrodiversity cellular system

In a macrodiversity cellular system, switching radio links between base stations cannot be done instantaneously. Thus, branch selection is usually based on the measurement of the slowly varying local-mean power rather than the rapidly varying instantaneous signal power. We offer an exact mathematical model to analyze the performance of a local-mean-based macrodiversity cellular system in a shadowed-Rician (desired)/shadowed-Rayleigh (interfering) channel. We investigate the impact of both fading (Rician or Rayleigh) and shadowing in terms of cochannel interference (CCI) probability. We also present an analytical model to incorporate the effects of branch correlation on macrodiversity systems.