Secrecy Outage Analysis over Correlated Composite Nakagami-$m$/Gamma Fading Channels

Abstract: The secrecy outage performance of wireless communication systems operating over spatially correlated composite fading channels is analyzed in this paper. We adopt a multiplicative composite channel model for both the legitimate communication link and the link between the eavesdropper and the legitimate transmitter, consisting of Nakagami-$m$ distributed small-scale fading and shadowing (large-scale fading) modeled by the Gamma distribution. We consider the realistic case where small-scale fading between the links is independent, but shadowing is arbitrarily correlated, and present novel analytical expressions for the probability that the secrecy capacity falls below a target secrecy rate. The presented numerically evaluated results, verified by equivalent computer simulations, offer useful insights on the impact of shadowing correlation and composite fading parameters on the system's secrecy outage performance.