Distributed Discrete Power Control in Cellular PCS

Transmitter power control has proven to be an efficient method to control cochannel interference in cellular PCS, and to increase bandwidth utilization. Power control can also improve channel quality, lower the power consumption, and facilitate network management functions such as mobile removals, hand-off and admission control. Most of the previous studies have assumed that the transmitter power level is controlled in a continuous domain, whereas in digitally power controlled systems, power levels are discrete. In this paper we study the transmitter power control problem using only a finite set of discrete power levels. The optimal discrete power vector is characterized, and a Distributed Discrete Power Control (DDPC) algorithm which converges to it, is presented. The impact of the power level grid on the outage probability is also investigated. A microcellular case study is used to evaluate the outage probabilities of the algorithms.