Outage Correlation in Finite and Clustered Wireless Networks

Future wireless networks are expected to adopt many different network technologies and architectures that promise to greatly enhance data rate and provide ubiquitous coverage for end users, all while enabling higher spectral efficiency. These benefits come with an increased risk of co-channel interference and possible correlation in the aggregated interference, which impacts the communication performance. This paper introduces a mathematical framework to quantify the spatial correlation of the interference in finite and clustered wireless networks with signals subject to Rayleigh fading. Expressions are derived for the correlation coefficient of the outage probability when the interferers are located according to some of the most common point processes used in the literature to model the spatial distribution of the devices: binomial point process (i.e., relay networks with fixed users), Poisson point process (i.e., heterogeneous cellular networks), and Thomas point process (i.e., device-to-device networks).