Performance evaluation of power control algorithms in cellular UTRA systems

The CDMA based UMTS transmission technology in which all users simultaneously share the same common range of spectrum gets rather affected by the system interference. The reduction of interference is therefore a key issue in the development of optimal radio transmission in order to increase the system capacity. Power control is a well-known technology to improve the system performance. Different methods and their application within UMTS are presented. In this paper, level-based and interference-based control algorithms are introduced. An analytical approach for the capacity estimation is presented. The power control performance is compared by means of simulations and the optimal parameters for the algorithms are derived from the results.