Power Control

MA
WCD

What is Power Control ?

The power control regulates the transmit power of the terminal

and base station, which results in less interference and allows
more users on the same carrier.

Transmit power regulation thus provides more capacity in the

network
 MA
WCD

What is Power Control ?

With a frequency re-use of 1, it is very important to have

efficient power control in order to keep the interference
at a minimum.

For each subscriber service the aim is that the base station
shall receive the same power level from all handsets in the
cell regardless of distance from the base station.
 MA
WCD

What is Power Control ?

If the power level from one handset is higher than needed,

the quality will be excessive, taking a disproportionate
share of the resources and generating unnecessary
interference with the other subscribers in the network.

On the other hand, if power levels are too low this will
result in poor quality.
 MA
WCD

What is Power Control ?

In order to keep the received power at a suitable level, WCDMA

uses power control mechanism. By doing this the rapid change
in the radio channel is handled.

To ensure good performance, power control is implemented in

both the up-link and the down-link, which means that both the
output powers of the handset and the base station are frequently
updated.
 MA
WCD

Power Control

Tight and fast power control is the most important aspect in

WCDMA, in particular on the uplink. Without it , a single
overpowered mobile could block a whole cell.
The main reasons for implementing power control are :-
* near-far problem
* interference dependent capacity
* limited power source of the UE
 MA
WCD
Power Control
Near Far Effect
Uplink: Because of different attenuation signals to/from users
nearer to BS are stronger than signals to/from further located users.

Downlink: Because of the nature of attenuation at the cell border

the users experience higher interference that near to the BS. They
have high level of interfering signals from own BS and from other
BS.
 MA
WCD
Power Control

P1 > P2
P1

Node B
D1
UE1
Signal of UE1 will D2 P2
dominates signal
of UE2

UE2

Near Far Effect

 MA
WCD
Power Control
Tx Power
Tx Power

Rx Power Rx Power

Without Power Control With Power Control

 MA
WCD
Power Control

System Capacity is maximized if the transmitted power of

each terminal is controlled so that its signal arrives at
the Base station with the minimum required SIR.

In WCDMA power control is employed in both the uplink and

the down link
 MA
WCD
Power Control

Downlink
Downlink power control is basically for minimizing the
interference to other cells and compensating for other cells
interference as well as achieving acceptable SIR
 MA
WCD
Power Control

Up link
The main target of the Uplink power control is to:-
* Minimize near-far effect by making the transmission power
level received from all terminals as equal as possible at the home
cell for the same Qos.
* Minimizing intra-cell interference.
 MA
WCD
Power Control

Two type of power control mechanisms

Open Loop Power Control (OLPC)

Closed Loop Power Control (CLPC)

Inner loop

Outer loop
 MA
WCD
Power Control

Open Loop Power Control

- Basically used for uplink.

- UE adjust transmission power based on an estimate of
the received signal level from the base station common
pilot channel (CPICH) when the UE is in idle mode and
prior to physical random access channel (PRACH)
transmission.
- In addition UE receive information about the allowed
power parameters from the cell BCCH when in idle
mode.
 MA
WCD
Power Control

Open Loop Power Control

- UE adjust its uplink transmission power level in a way

that is inversely proportional to the pilot signal power
level. Consequently the stronger the received pilot signal,
the lower the UE transmitted power.
 MA
WCD
Power Control

Open Loop Power Control

UE
Node B

* If this attempt is unsuccessful, it will increase the power in steps and retry.
 MA
WCD
Power Control
Closed Loop Power Control (Inner loop)
Utilized when radio connection has already been established.
Main target is to compensate the effect of rapid changes in
the radio signal strength.
TPC commands 1500 times per sec.
Step size 1,2 or 3 db.
Power control decision on the basis of pre defined SIR value.
Should be fast enough to compensate for a Rayleigh fading ,
which depends on radio frequency and speed of the UE.
 MA
WCD
Power Control
Closed Loop Power Control (Inner loop) - Uplink

When Node B receives the UE signal it compares the signal

strength with the pre defined threshold value at Node B .

If Ptrx > threshold value ,

TPC from Node B ----- UE ( decrease signal power)

If Ptrx < threshold value ,

TPC from Node B ----- UE ( increase signal power)
 MA
WCD
Power Control
Closed Loop Power Control (Inner loop) - Downlink

Role of Node B and UE are interchanged.

If Ptrx > threshold value ,

TPC from UE ----- Node B ( decrease signal power)

If Ptrx < threshold value ,

TPC from UE ----- Node B ( increase signal power)
 MA
WCD
Power Control
Closed Loop Power Control (Outer loop)
RNC comes into the picture.
RNC adjust threshold SIR values as per changing radio
condition , bit error rate (BER) , Block error rate (BLER).
Not to high, not too low SIR threshold value.
If received quality of uplink is better than the required quality ,
the SIR target is decreased , if not SIR target is increased.
 MA
WCD

Cell Breathing
 MA
WCD

What is Cell Breathing ?

Cell breathing is the constant change of the range of the

geographical area covered by a cellular telephone transmitter
based on the amount of traffic currently using that transmitter.
 MA
WCD
Cell breathing

C overage/C apacity

BS 1 BS 2

Fully loaded system

U nloaded system
 MA
WCD

What is Cell Breathing ?

When a cell becomes heavily loaded, it shrinks. Subscriber

traffic is then redirected to a neighboring cell that is more lightly
loaded, which is called load balancing. Cell breathing is a
common phenomenon of 2G and 3G wireless systems including
code-division multiple access (CDMA). WCDMA Systems are
designed to manage cell breathing.
 MA
WCD
What is Cell Breathing ?

The WCDMA technology enables multiple transmitters to use

the same frequency at the same time.

Each transmission appears like background noise to other receivers

However this reduces the signal to noise ratio (SIR)

This means that there will be interference between users in the

same cell and in neighboring cells.

The WCDMA spreading and despreading processes allow this

interference to be suppressed to some degree.
 MA
WCD
What is Cell Breathing ?
The Level of suppression is termed the system processing gain.

The processing gain will vary according to the service.

When the number of subscriber in the cell is low (low load), good
quality can be achieved even at the long distance.

As the number of subscriber increases loading within the cell is

increased, the Base Station noise floor appears to rise.

The mobiles must transmit additional power to overcome the

increased interference or have to get closer to the base station to
achieve good quality.
 MA
WCD
What is Cell Breathing ?

When the cell load is low coverage area is more. (Expansion)

When the cell load is high coverage area low. (Shrinking)

 MA
WCD
Load Balancing

Cell breathing provides a degree of load balancing.

As the cell becomes more heavily loaded it becomes smaller.

This has the effect of shedding users around the cell boundary to
more lightly loaded neighboring cells.
 MA
WCD

AC - Admission Control
The AC function
will guarantee the
overall system Qos
by admitting (or
Uplink
interference New users blocked
above this point
Max planned interference

blocking) new
Max
users User added
planned
load
Monitors cell load
by
output power in downlink Noise floor Load

received interference
in uplink