Differential Fade Margin and Handoff Gain of Wireless Cellular Networks

In a wireless cellular network, the over-the-air communication links are subject to random shadow fading. In order to guarantee a given level of link reliability, a link margin is added to the radio frequency (RF) design link budget. Accurately estimating the required link margins is of great importance to both wireless service providers and wireless telecom gear infrastructure vendors. For example, overestimating the required margin by just 1 dB can result in the need for about 14 percent more cells to cover the same area, assuming a 35 dB per decade propagation loss. This results in an unnecessarily conservative cell count quote for a wireless infrastructure vendor in today's highly competitive telecom infrastructure market or a wireless service provider who spends precious capital