Angular Spectrum and Second Order Statistics of Interference in Wireless Networks

The performance of wireless networks is fundamentally limited by the interference level. In the existing literature, the direction-selective characteristics of interference have not been considered. In order to alleviate this problem, we propose a novel network description method, namely the interference azimuth spectrum (IAS). The IAS represents the distribution of interference in the angular domain, and is parallel to the conventional power azimuth spectrum (PAS) used in propagation channels. This description method allows us to determine the fundamental second-order small-scale fading statistics, including level crossing rate (LCR) and average fade distance (AFD), for interference fluctuations at a mobile receiver traveling through a local area. These analytical results would be useful for the design and performance assessment of future networks featured by opportunistic, random, and dense placement of nodes. © 2013 IEEE.