A Simplified Approach to Estimate Bounds on Fading Channel Unavailability

217 Abstract—A simplified approach is presented to evaluate fading channel unavailability. A fixed degree of certainty can be established and bounds on the same can be estimated. The slow fading channel is considered and is modeled as a discrete state Markov process. For such fading channel average value of outage time can be computed either using simulation or with the help of measured data set. But there is no indication of certainty that can be placed in its value. The paper presents an approach to estimate the range of outage rate and outage probability. Finally, bounds on channel unavailability are presented with the variation in outage time and number of outages. Proposed analysis can also be applied to fast fading channels when outage occurs frequently. Results may be used to provide higher order protocol performance evaluation and optimization. Examples are given to illustrate the results derived in the paper and to justify the approach presented.