A Simple Approximation of the Aggregate Interference From a Cluster of Many Interferers With Correlated Shadowing

We examine the statistical distribution of the interference produced by a cluster of many co-channel interferers: e.g., a sensor network, or a city full of active wireless devices and access points. We consider a clustered interferer layout and analyze the interference as experienced at a given point outside (and not immediately near to) the interferer area. We model the propagation paths as experiencing power law attenuation and lognormal correlated shadowing, with pairwise correlations depending on the relative positions of the two interferers. It has already been shown in literature that adding correlation to the shadowing model can give significantly different, and more realistic, results. Our solution is mostly analytical, with only a small amount of numerical integration required. Whereas both simulation and other analytical methods become very computationally demanding as the number of interferers grows, our method's complexity is independent of the number of interferers, and its precision actually improves when their number increases.