This paper studies the performance of antenna array processing in distributed
multiple access networks without power control. The interference is represented
as a Poisson point process. Desired and interfering signals are subject to both
path-loss fading (with an exponent greater than 2) and to independent Rayleigh
fading. Using these assumptions, we derive the exact closed form expression for
the cumulative distribution function of the output
signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio when optimum combining is applied. This
results in a pertinent measure of the network performance in terms of the
outage probability, which in turn provides insights into the network capacity
gain that could be achieved with antenna array processing. We present and
discuss examples of applications, as well as some numerical results.Comment: Submitted to IEEE Trans. on Wireless Communication (Jan. 2009