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On the Tail Transition of First Arrival Position Channels: From Cauchy to Exponential Decay

Information Theory 2026-04-14 v4 Signal Processing math.IT Probability

Abstract

While the zero-drift first arrival position (FAP) channel exhibits a Cauchy-distributed lateral displacement, nonzero drift in practical systems introduces advective transport that regularizes this singular limit. This letter characterizes the drift-induced transition of FAP distribution from heavy-tailed algebraic regime to exponential regularization. By asymptotically examining the exact FAP density, we identify a characteristic propagation distance (CPD) that serves as the fundamental boundary separating diffusion-dominated and drift-dominated regimes. Numerical experiments demonstrate that in low-drift environments, variance-matched Gaussian approximations severely underestimate the true communication potential, whereas the zero-drift Cauchy law provides a robust, physically grounded performance baseline.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2511.19074,
  title  = {On the Tail Transition of First Arrival Position Channels: From Cauchy to Exponential Decay},
  author = {Yen-Chi Lee},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2511.19074},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

5 pages, 3 figures. Accepted for publication in IEEE Communications Letters