Abstract
The effects of Nakagami multipath fading and log-normal shadowing on the area spectral efficiency (ASE) of cellular systems with variable-rate transmission is studied. Results indicate that the ASE increases as fading on both the desired and interfering signals decreases. In addition, the ASE is predominantly affected by the channel quality of the desired users, rather than by the fading parameter of the interferers. Furthermore, depending on the interference configuration, the optimal spectral efficiency is achieved when frequencies are reused every one or two cells. Finally, shadowing reduces the system spectral efficiency but does not affect the ASE dependence on the reuse distance.