Minimum duration outages in Markov channels

We present an analytical framework for the computation of the outage probability, the outage duration and the frequency of outage. A Markov description is assumed for the channel, which allows closed-form solutions and can effectively model many situations of interest. Outage events are defined as the channel being attenuated for at least a time duration /spl tau/ (minimum duration outage). Also, extensions of this concept and applications to higher-layer performance are discussed.