A Cumulant-Based Characterization of the Aggregate Interference Power in Wireless Networks

The importance of characterizing the aggregate interference power generated by a wireless network has increased with the emergence of different types of wireless networks such as ad-hoc networks, sensor networks, and cognitive radios. A cumulant-based characterization of this aggregate interference is an attractive approach. A number or recent papers in literature have dealt with cumulants of the aggregate interference but under specific scenarios. In this paper, we introduce a simple yet comprehensive method to determine the cumulants of the aggregate interference power originating from a wireless network. This method is quite general and applicable for finite and infinite network sizes, and it is flexible to encompass different system and propagation parameters such as large-scale fading, small-scale fading or even composite fading. We also investigate the behavior of these cumulants with respect to changes in the network size and fading distributions.