A Model of Coverage Probability under Shadow Fading

We give a simple analytic model of coverage probability for CDMA cellular phone systems under lognormally distributed shadow fading. Prior analyses have generally considered the coverage probability of a single antenna; here we consider the probability of coverage by an ensemble of antennas, using some independence assumptions, but also modeling a limited form of dependency among the antenna fades. We use the FentonWilkinson approach of approximating the external interference I0 as lognormally distributed. We show that our model gives a coverage probability that is generally within a few percent of Monte Carlo estimates, over a wide regime of antenna strengths and other relevant parameters.