Convexity properties of outage probability under Rayleigh fading

In this paper, convexity properties of outage probability are investigated under Rayleigh fading for an average power-constrained communications system that employs maximal-ratio combining (MRC) at the receiver. By studying the first and second order derivatives of the outage probability with respect to the transmitted signal power, it is found out that the outage probability is a monotonically decreasing function with a single inflection point. This observation suggests the possibility of improving the outage performance via on-off type power randomization/sharing under stringent average transmit power constraints. It is shown that the results can also be extended to the selection combining (SC) technique in a straightforward manner. Finally, a numerical example is provided to illustrate the theoretical results. © 2012 IEEE.