On the Effect of C/I Correlation on Cellular Wireless Network Downlink Performance

In this paper, we model a cellular wireless network and investigate the effect of correlation among the carrier-to-interference (C/I) ratios of multiple users on the network downlink performance with multiuser diversity. Base stations are randomly placed and users are linked to their closest base stations. The C/I ratios of multiple users become conditionally dependent. For such a realistic deployment scenario, we utilize stochastic geometry tools and copula functions to take into account this correlation and analyze the coverage probability and spectral efficiency. Our simulation results demonstrate that the commonly used independence assumption of the user C/I values overestimates both actual coverage probability and spectral efficiency of the system.