Efficient modeling of correlated shadow fading in dense wireless multi-hop networks

Correlated shadow fading has a detrimental effect on the performance of wireless systems. Neglecting shadowing correlations could lead to inaccurate simulation results and unreliable wireless system design. In this paper, we propose and analyze a correlated shadow fading model based on Gaussian random fields. The model enables the generation of spatially correlated shadow fading for all meshed links in wireless multi-hop networks. Both analytical and numerical results show that the proposed model is in good agreement with the literature in terms of the statistical properties and correlation coefficients. Furthermore, the Circulant Embedding method of the proposed simulation model significantly reduces the computational cost.