On the Gain of Joint Decoding for Multi-Connectivity

Multi-connectivity is considered to be key for enabling reliable transmissions in future wireless networks. Transmission reliability depends on the used combining algorithm such as joint decoding (JD), maximum selection combining (MSC), and maximum ratio combining (MRC). To compare the performance of these combining algorithms we derive their outage probabilities based on distributed source coding. The outage probability is analytically described depending on the number of links, the modulation scheme, the code rate, and the received signal-to-noise-ratios (SNR). We show that JD requires less transmit power than MRC and MSC to achieve a given target outage probability.