Distribution of outage intervals in macrodiversity cellular systems

In this paper, a general model for the analysis of outage intervals in mobi le radio systems with macrodiversity is proposed. In a log-normal shadowing environment, reception diversity from two base stations is considered in t he general case of different fading margins. Through a level-crossing analy sis, the probability density function (pdf) of the outage interval is deriv ed. It is seen that exact expressions can be obtained for the average outag e occurrence rate and the average outage duration. The exact expressions ar e used to also improve the accuracy of the pdf at small values of the fadin g margins, by forcing the pdf to meet the exact average through a proper ch oice of its parameters. As a particular case, explicit solutions are derive d for minimum duration outages.