On Fading Channel Dependency Structures with a Positive Zero-Outage Capacity

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that positive zero-outage capacity can be achieved in slow fading channels by exploiting specific dependency structures among channel gains, enabling reliable communication without retransmissions.

Contribution

It introduces a copula-based approach to identify dependency structures that yield positive zero-outage capacity in slow fading channels without perfect channel state information.

Findings

Positive ZOC achievable with certain dependency structures.

Explicit characterization of maximum ZOC for Rayleigh and Nakagami-m fading.

Applicable to MRC and SC combining schemes.

Abstract

With emerging wireless technologies like 6G, many new applications like autonomous systems evolve which have strict demands on the reliability and latency of data communications. In the scenario of the commonly investigated independent slow fading links, the zero-outage capacity (ZOC) is zero and retransmissions are therefore inevitable. In this work, we show that a positive ZOC can be achieved under the same setting of slow fading with constant transmit power and without perfect channel state information at the transmitter, if the joint distribution of the channel gains follows certain structures. This allows reliable reception without any outages, thus not requiring retransmissions. Based on a systematic copula approach, we show that there exists a set of dependency structures for which positive ZOCs can be achieved for both maximum ratio combining (MRC) and selection combining (SC). We characterize the maximum ZOC within a finite number of bits. The results are evaluated explicitly for the special cases of Rayleigh fading and Nakagami-$m$ fading in order to quantify the ZOCs for common fading models.