Power Control in UMTS

Alok Mohan Upadhyay

Agenda

Why you need power control?

What is power control?

Types of power control

Interference vs. power control

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23 November 2014

Why do you need power control?

To minimize the interference in the system

So, efficient power control is needed to increase the

performance of network

A good power control mechanism can handle more

number of customers at a given point of time

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23 November 2014

Why do you need power control? (continued)

This will avoid near-far effect

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23 November 2014

Logical
Why
do you
channels
need power control? (continued)

The situation is different in the downlink direction

The down link signal transmitted by one base station orthogonal

Signals which are orthogonal do not interfere each other

Signal reflections cause non-orthogonal interference in a base station

hence causes interference

Moreover, signals sent from different base stations are non orthogonal
in nature thus increase the interference
Bottom line here is we need to have power control mechanism in both the

uplink and down link

Slide Title | CONFIDENTIAL 2006

23 November 2014

Types of power control

There are two types of power control

Open loop power control

The transmitting entity shall measure the channel interference

and sets its power accordingly

Closed loop power control
The quality measurements are done at the receiving entity and

the results are sent back to the transmitting entity with the feed
back so that it can adjust the power accordingly
It can not react quick to the channel conditions

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23 November 2014

Types of power control (continued )

The closed-loop power control in the UTRAN can be further

divided into two processes: inner-loop and outer-loop power
control.

The outer-loop power control sets the signal-to-interference

ratio (SIRtarget) and the inner-loop power control adjusts the
peer entity transmit power so that the measured SIR fulfills the
SIRtarget requirement.

This adjustment is done with transmit power control (TPC)

commands.

Slide Title | CONFIDENTIAL 2006

23 November 2014

TPC mechanism

TPC bit is transmitted in every time slot

There is no neutral TPC signal

All power control signal either have an increase or decrease

command

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23 November 2014

Types of power control (continued )

The receiving entity (UE or Node B) measures the SIR and compares
it to the SIRtarget. If received SIR > SIRtarget then the TPC bit is set
to 0 (reduce power) in the peer entity. Otherwise it is set to 1 (increase
power). This TPC bit is transmitted to the peer entity once every time
slot.

Inner-loop power control is also known as fast power control. The

basic principles of Inner-loop power control are similar in both the UE
and in the UTRAN.

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23 November 2014

Types of power control (continued )

10

SIR is measure every 667 micro second period

Based on this information a decision can be made to increase or decrease

the power

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23 November 2014

Power Control Open Loop

11

Use to determine uplink

transmit power to use for
initial (random!!) access,
using downlink power
reference and broadcast
information
CPICH downlink transmit

power
uplink interference
constant value

Slide Title | CONFIDENTIAL 2006

UE will measure received

power of pilot (CPICH
RSCP), and calculates initial
power
UEs close to Node-B should
transmit with lesser power
compare to UEs far away to
Node-B

23 November 2014

Power Control Closed Inner Loop

12

1500 times per second

(1500 Hz)
Maintains Signal to Noise
ratio

SIR
Measurement
Received
TPC Cmd

Fading, Shadowing, etc

Control interference

Node-B

+/- dB

Inner loop power control

in soft handover scenario
Decrease UL transmit

power, even if one DL radio

link commands to decrease
Increase UL transmit
power, only when all DL
radio links commands to
increase

+/- dB

UE

Received
TPC Cmd
SIR
Measurement

Slide Title | CONFIDENTIAL 2006

23 November 2014