Optimization of Downlink Power Control
based on LTE
Chul Park
ETRI
Daejeon, South Korea
pchul@etri.re.kr
Abstract This paper presents a downlink power optimization
scheme to improve LTE system performance in accordance with
UE speed. Especially in railway wireless communication system,
the speed of UE is very important factor because trains move so
fast over 300km/h that usually downlink performance should be
degraded. So the additional requirements for the high-speed
railway mobile communication system besides commercial LTE
system are needed. At the LTE Femto-cell test-bed including
HeNB, UE, fading simulator and some test equipment, downlink
performance is tested with the PA parameter of downlink power
control for several cases of UE speed. By analysis of the test
result the optimum PA parameter can be found regarding UE
speed. An adaptive downlink power control scheme is introduced
to improve downlink performance in high speed mobile condition.
According to the simulation result for the proposed scheme
downlink throughput is increased by 6.2% in mobile
environment considering LTE railway communication service.
Keywords-component; LTE; Femto; Railway; Downlink Power
Control; Performance; Optimization
I. INTRODUCTION
As a future railway mobile telecommunications system
LTE is strongly considered by increasing number of railway
organizations and mobile telecom industry because LTE
railway system has introduced a new level of excellence in
mobile communications meeting strong demands of various
services and securities, where a reliable communication is
essential for precise train control. LTE has many advantages to
support better performance and user experience through
broadband data network and the railway LTE network can also
be switched to commercial LTE network as a backup system in
case of emergency. LTE can provide much faster and various
services to railway network, but there need some modifications
and optimization in order to adopt commercial LTE system
into railway network. One of the key differences between
commercial and railway network is maximum speed of UE.
Along with the developments of the high speed railway, higher
technical requirements for the high-speed railway mobile
communication system are needed. The speed of trains is much
faster than any kinds of other terrestrial transportation systems
in commercial LTE network. The mobility over 300km/h
should be considered to guarantee the quality of service for the
railway LTE network.
(Acknowledgement) This research was supported by a grant(10PURT-
B056851-01) from Future Urban Railway Development Program funded by
Minister of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs of Korean government.
978-1-4673-4828-7/12/$31.00 20122 IEEE
Hong Seok Choi
Nokia Siemens Network Korea
Seoul, South Korea
tony.choi@nsn.com
II. LTE FEMTO SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATION
A. LTE Femto-cell System
Femto-cell can provide high throughput, enhanced
coverage and stable services based on location. The features of
LTE Femto-cell system are small number of users, low power
cellular base station network that are typically deployed in
residential, enterprise, metropolitan hotspot or rural settings.
LTE Femto-cell base station (HeNB) supports usually 32~64
active UEs in a cell coverage area while Macro-cell eNB
supports hundreds of UEs of active users at the same time. But
from the capacity point of view the maximum throughput of
Femto-cell is almost the same as that of Macro-cell. For
example the maximum downlink throughput of both Macro-
cell and Femto-cell is about 75Mbps for 10MHz BW. The
differences of Femto-cell and Macro-cell are the number of
users and the transmit power.
B. Railway System Application
If the transmit power of Femto-cell is increased with
narrow beam antennas along straight railways having high
directivity gain, Femto-cell will be quite a adequate system for
railway wireless communication because the railway network
does not need many the number of UEs at the same time.
Usually there are not many trains in railways within a Femto-
cell coverage compared to that of UEs in commercial network.
LTE railway Femto-cell network can provide various
communication services such as voice, video, data service as
well as automatic train control and monitoring functions. Many
UEs in trains, on railways, or stations can be connected to a
HeNB through wireless channel and from HeNB to core
network there are wired links of cables as shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1. LTE Railway Network Diagram
536 ICTC 2012
 PA=0 (-6dB) PA =1 (-4.77dB) PA =2 (-3dB) PA =3 (-1.77dB)

PA =4 (0dB) PA =5 (1dB) PA =6 (2dB) PA =7 (3dB)

Figure 2. PA and Constellation on VSA

III. DOWNLINK POWER CONTROL TEST TABLE I. TEST-BED EQUIPMENT SPECIFICATION

In railway LTE network, HeNB should support broadband
Test-bed Equipments Specifications
data rate traffic service even for high speed mobile UEs
minimizing performance degradation. To achieve these HeNB Femtocell BS (SK Telesys)
requirements of downlink performance, the effective downlink UE USB Dongle (LG-SD711)
power control algorithm should be considered. Fading Simulator SR5500 (Spirent)
VSA E4440A (Agilent)
A. Downlink Power Control in LTE
In a PRB(Physical Resource Block) of downlink frame
structure there are two types of subcarriers, one is RS(reference Fading simulator between HeNB and UE generates wireless
signal) and the other is data carrier for PDSCH and other channel fading of ITU channel model for vehicular test with
physical channels. RS is used for demodulation, channel various UE speed. The fading simulator is connected only on
estimation, synchronization and some auxiliary functions while downlink because the uplink is bypassed from the fading
data carrier for PDSCH turns into meaningful user traffic. simulator not to affect this downlink test result. So uplink
performance is always ideal regardless of downlink conditions.
RS EPRE(Energy Per Resource Element) is constant given
by the parameter Reference-signal-power provided by higher TABLE II. LTE SYSTEM PARAMETERS
layers in [W]. The ratio of PDSCH EPRE to RS EPRE is
denoted by PA. The parameter PA can have eight different Parameters Specifications
values of {-6, -4.77, -3, -1.77, 0, 1, 2, 3}. Constellation EARFCN 2500 (879MHz)
according to each PA is shown in Figure 2. Cyan color is for RS
and green color is for PDSCH subcarriers. If PA is small the Bandwidth 10MHz (50 RB)
total downlink transmit power is small, and if PA is big the total Transmission Mode 3 (Large delay CDD MIMO)
downlink transmit power is also big. In order to compare the Channel Model ITU Channel Model for Vehicular Test
downlink performance equally, the total power of all 6 test
PDSCH MCS Index 18 (64QAM)
cases is normalized by adjustment into the same power level.
Target PER 3%
B. Test-bed Setup and Test Condition
To test the downlink power control performance according Table II shows the LTE system parameters for the LTE
to PA, Table I shows the Test-bed equipments and their downlink performance test. Required SINR for each PA and UE
specifications.

537
speed is measured by adjusting AWGN power compared to Speed [km/h] LTE Commercial LTE Railways
downlink signal power from HeNB. The required SINR can be 0 70% 16.7%
found from reading the current SINR at fading simulator when
60 20% 16.7%
the downlink PER is 3% for each test case. In order to measure
and compare the required SINR for the test cases, the downlink 120 10% 16.7%
MCS is fixed for the all test cases as 18 (64QAM) which 180 - 16.7%
transport block size is 19848 according to the 3GPP 240 - 16.7%
specifications.
300 - 16.7%
C. Downlink Power Control Test Result As the simulation result in Figure 4 the adaptive scheme for
downlink power control has the best performance among the
The downlink power control performance test result is
other PA values.
shown in Figure 3. According to the result PA 7 shows the best
performance in stationary condition (0km/h) but the worst in
high speed condition (300km/h). PA 0 shows the best in high
speed condition (300km/h) but the worst in stationary condition
(0km/h). There exists trade-off between the parameter PA and
UE speed. In commercial LTE system PA 4 is generally used as
a default parameter which provides average performance in
downlink among the all cases of UE speed.

Figure 4. Throughput Improvement according to PA

B. Proposed Adaptive downlink power control Scheme

The adaptive downlink power control scheme is proposed
as Figure 5. HeNB measures the speed of every UE
periodically which is connected in active mode. According to
UE speed the PA parameter is changed adaptively for each UE
to support the best downlink performance.

UE Speed
Measurement
Figure 3. Performance Test Result

No
IV. PERFORMANCE OPTIMIZATION FOR MOBILITY Speedt60 PA=0
Through above test result the downlink performance is
related to power control parameter PA and UE speed. If PA is Yes
adjusted according to UE speed adaptively, the downlink
No
performance will be optimized at any speed of UE. Speedt120 PA=2
A. Adaptive Downlink Power Control
Yes
The distribution of UE speed is supposed for adaptive
downlink power control simulation as in Table III for LTE No
commercial service and railway service. In commercial service Speedt180 PA=4
environment UE are supposed to be stationary in 70% but in
railway service every speed of UEs are considered with equal Yes
probabilities. PA=7

TABLE III. DISTRIBUTION OF UE SPEED FOR SIMULATION

Figure 5. Adaptive PA Selection Scheme
Speed [km/h] LTE Commercial LTE Railways

538
 V. CONCLUSION
At LTE Femto test-bed, downlink power control [1]
performance is tested with real HeNB and UE through fading
simulator. The test result shows that the power control
parameter PA is related to UE speed in order to provide better [2]
throughput. The best combination of PA and UE speed can be
found by analysis and the downlink power control parameter [3]
selection scheme can be derived to optimize the downlink
throughput regarding each UE speed. Using this proposed [4]
scheme downlink performance can be improved 5.4% in LTE
commercial system and 6.2% in LTE railway system.
539
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