Higher Rank Interference Effect on Weak Beamforming or OSTBC Terminals

Abstract: User performance on a wireless network depends on whether a neighboring cochannel interferer applies a single (spatial) stream or a multi stream transmission. This work analyzes the impact of interference rank on a beamforming and orthogonal space-time block coded (OSTBC) user transmission. We generalize existing analytical results on signal-to-interference-plus-noise-ratio (SINR) distribution and outage probability under arbitrary number of unequal power interferers. We show that higher rank interference causes lower outage probability, and can support better outage threshold especially in the case of beamforming.