A Review of Transmission Rate over Wireless Fading Channels: Classifications, Applications, and Challenges

To address the explosive traffic demands, the capacity of the fading channel is increasingly becoming a prime concern in the designing of the wireless communication system. The channel capacity is an extremely important quantity, since it allows the transmission of the data through the channel with an arbitrarily small probability of error. In other words, capacity dictates the maximum rate of information transmission, called as 'capacity' of channel, determined by the intrinsic properties of the channel and is independent of the content of the transmitted information. In this paper, we present a comprehensive survey of the existing work related to the channel capacity model over various fading channels. With an elaborated explanation of the theory of channel capacity, definitions of channel capacity based on the channel state information are reviewed. To compliment this, review of the technique to enhance the channel capacity is discussed and reviewed. An effective capacity model to overcome the channel capacity limitation is also explained. Furthermore, as the secure transmission of data is of utmost importance, to address this physical layer security model is also reviewed. We also summarize the work related to channel capacity in various types of wireless networks. We finally cover the future research directions, including less explored aspects of the channel capacity that can be studied to design efficient communication systems.