This full text paper was peer reviewed at the direction of IEEE Communications Society subject matter experts

for publication in the ICC 2007 proceedings.

Uplink-Downlink Imbalance in Wireless Cellular Networks

D. Ghosh, C. Lott
the uplink and the downlink signal strengths. Different technologies attempt to mitigate this problem using different mechanisms. Unfortunately, due to dynamically changing network conditions such as system loading, differences in antenna gains, and radio channel propagation variations, imbalance is an inherent property of all wireless networks, and must be accounted for in the design. Surprisingly, the impact of uplink-downlink imbalance on cellular wireless communication system performance seems to have been overlooked for the most part in open literature and in standardized simulation frameworks. We are aware of some exceptions dynamic channel allocation algorithms for TDMA systems have been presented in [1][2], which allocate a channel to an AT based on both uplink and downlink signal strengths as opposed to the signal strength of only one link; and in [3] there is a brief mention of the existence of uplinkdownlink imbalance in networks in the context of site selection diversity transmission power control algorithms. However [1][3] do not discuss link imbalance as a general system property. The contributions of this paper are 1) we present sources of link imbalance in realistic TDD and FDD networks, 2) we define a general technology-independent measure of link imbalance for wireless cellular networks, 3) we discuss the impact of link imbalance on traffic and overhead channel performance, adaptive server selection and soft handoff, and Rise-over-Thermal control and Computed Load control, 4) we present a model of receive antenna imbalance at the AN and use it in simulation studies, and finally 5) we discuss the effect of soft-handoff on system robustness, and the robustness of Computed Load control, in the presence of uplink-downlink partially-correlated time-varying shadow fading which models link imbalance in real networks, via simulations using cdma2000 1xEV-DO as an example. II.
SOURCES OF UPLINK-DOWNLINK IMBALANCE

AbstractUplink-Downlink imbalance is a characteristic of all wireless networks which greatly impacts system performance, and must be accounted for in system design and simulation. However this property seems to have received sparse attention in literature. This paper describes imbalance, its potential sources, and its impact on traffic and overhead channel performance, soft handoff, adaptive server selection, and sector load control schemes. This paper defines imbalance metrics, a model for simulating antenna imbalance, and presents simulation study of system robustness to link imbalance using cdma2000 1xEV-DO as an example. Index TermsWireless Networks, Imbalance, Adaptive Server Selection, Handoff, RoT, Load Control, Time-Varying Shadow.

I. INTRODUCTION

wireless communication systems facilitate twoway communication between a set of mobile stations or access terminals (ATs) and a fixed network infrastructure (usually the Internet). Typically the ATs communicate with the fixed network infrastructure via a set of fixed base stations or access networks (ANs). The area covered by a single base station is called a cell. Usually a cell is further partitioned into multiple sectors. Transmissions from the AT to AN are commonly referred to as uplink or reverse link transmissions, while that from the AN to AT are referred to as downlink or forward link transmissions. The radio access scheme for each link direction may be FDMA, TDMA, CDMA, OFDMA, or some combination. Both uplink and downlink transmissions consist of two types of information 1) actual traffic or data for the link, and 2) overhead or feedback information for both the links (e.g. pilot, H-ARQ, power control, channel quality). A well-known problem in cellular wireless communication systems, irrespective of the radio access scheme, is network level performance degradation caused by signal strength imbalances between the uplink and the downlink of an AT to a sector. As an example, the sector with the strongest downlink signal strength to an AT may not necessarily be the sector with the strongest uplink signal strength for that AT. Consequently, if the AT gets served on the downlink by the sector with the strongest downlink signal strength, the corresponding feedback on the uplink to that sector needs to be protected against degraded performance due to low uplink signal strength. Hence one important system design objective is to balance
ELLULAR

D. Ghosh and C. Lott are with QUALCOMM Inc., Corporate R&D, 5775 Morehouse Drive, San Diego, CA 92121, USA. E-mail: {dghosh, clott} @ qualcomm.com. Corresponding author: D. Ghosh.

The following are some realistic sources of uplink-downlink imbalance in cellular wireless communication systems: 1) Radio Front-End (RFE) Components: Differences in the receive and transmit RFE components at the AT and the AN are inevitable. As an example, consider an AT with equal path loss to two sectors, say sector1 in cell1 and sector2 in cell2. Let both sectors have the same number of transmit antennas. Let sector1 have one receive antenna, and sector2 have two receive antennas. Note that this can be viewed as an extreme case of antenna gain imbalance in sector 1 where one receive antenna has zero gain.

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This full text paper was peer reviewed at the direction of IEEE Communications Society subject matter experts for publication in the ICC 2007 proceedings.

Simulation results demonstrating imbalance due to receive antenna gain imbalance has been shown in section V-A. Assume interference-limited operation (i.e., thermal noise does not dominate) in both link directions. Let the uplink (and downlink) interference level be the same in both the sectors. The average downlink signal strength from both the sectors will be the same. However the uplink signal strength combined over both the receive antennas at sector2 will be about 3dB higher (and have less variance due to receive diversity) than that in sector1 for a fixed AT transmit power. This along with different short term fading dynamics may lead to link imbalance scenarios. In general, the following may cause link imbalance in both TDD and FDD systems a) Imprecise antenna calibration leading to antenna gain imbalance, b) Natural drift of RFE components over time affecting signal strength, and c) Asymmetry in transmit and/or receive diversity across the network (as described in the example above). 2) Uplink-Downlink Loading and Handoff Asymmetry: The traffic load (and thereby interference) seen by the uplink and the downlink is prone to be asymmetrical in and across sectors in practical networks. Further, one link may have soft/softer handoff but not the other. These two factors make it difficult to always maintain the same handoff boundaries in the two links across sectors in both TDD and FDD systems. 3) Network Planning: Often in practical deployments the AN transmit power across sectors is fine-tuned for optimizing downlink sector coverage. Similarly repeaters are often used on the uplink for optimizing uplink sector coverage. Different deployment scenarios on the uplink and downlink can cause the handoff boundaries to be different on the two links in and across sectors in both TDD and FDD systems. Note that the effect can be worse in multi-carrier deployments with frequency reuse. 4) Electromagnetic Propagation Environment: Typically in FDD systems the shadow fading processes in the uplink and downlink of a sector are not perfectly correlated. III.
MEASURE OF LINK IMBALANCE

units for AT m at time t with the maximum uplink and

up downlink SINR respectively, i.e., U m (t ) = arg max m,n (t ) dn and D m (t ) = arg max m, n (t ) . nN

nN

We define AT m to be in uplink-imbalance at slot t if,

up up m,U m (t ) (t ) > m, Dm (t ) (t )

(1) (2)

and in downlink-imbalance at slot t if,

dn dn m, Dm ( t ) (t ) > m,U m ( t ) (t )

Further, we compute the uplink-imbalance magnitude of AT m at slot t as,

[ m,U
up
m (t )

up (t ) m, D

m (t )

up (t )] sgn[ m,U

m (t )

up (t ) m, D

m (t )

(t )]

(3) (4)

and the downlink-imbalance magnitude of AT m at slot t as,

dn dn dn dn [ m, Dm (t ) (t ) m,U m (t ) (t )] sgn[ m, Dm ( t ) (t ) m,U m ( t ) (t )]

We shall use signal-to-interference-and-noise-ratio (SINR) to define metrics which provide an indication and measure of link imbalance. Let M be the set of ATs and N be the set of downlink encoding units or uplink decoding units (e.g., sector when no soft-combining across sectors in a cell, and cell otherwise) in the network. For any m M , n N , let
up m, n (t )

denote the filtered SINR (in dB) of AT m to the decoding unit n on the uplink at slot t (combined over all receive antennas
dn at the decoding unit), and m,n (t ) denote the filtered SINR (in

where, sgn[ a] = 1 if a > 0 and zero otherwise. We use the combined and filtered SINR at the decoding (encoding) unit rather than other metrics like path loss as it includes all the effects discussed in section II, and best reflects actual channel performance when the SINR filter duration is chosen based on the traffic (or overhead) transmission duration. The imbalance magnitude in the SINR domain as per (3)-(4) also reflects the loss in link budget for a transmit power limited AT in the presence of imbalance. If we use path loss in (1)-(4) instead of SINR, the effects described in section II are not captured. For example, an AT may be at equal path loss to two sectors, but due to the effects in section II, the strongest uplink sector may not be the strongest downlink sector in terms of actual SINR. The two link imbalance scenarios of interest are a) SINRs of downlink traffic channel and its associated feedback channel on the uplink as in (3), and b) SINRs of uplink traffic channel and its associated feedback channel on the downlink as in (4). Consider the first scenario. When the best downlink traffic channel and the best uplink feedback channel decoding units are the same at time t , i.e., U m (t ) = D m (t ) , there is no link imbalance. When they are not, the difference in the uplink feedback channel SINR in (3) indicates the required increase in the feedback channel gain on the uplink corresponding to the best downlink traffic SINR decoding unit in order to maintain a target uplink feedback channel performance (e.g., error rate). The two main effects of increasing the feedback channel gain are 1) Increased uplink interference, and 2) Link budget hit, i.e., ATs at cell edge may already be at their maximum transmit power and hence unable to increase their feedback channel gain. Similar discussions apply for the second scenario. IV.
NETWORK LEVEL IMPACT OF LINK IMBALANCE

dB) of AT m to the encoding unit n on the downlink at slot t (combined over all receive antennas at the AT). The filter duration may be chosen to represent the maximum packet (or overhead) transmission time, and is technology dependent. Let U m (t ) N and D m (t ) N denote the decoding and encoding

A. Traffic and Feedback Channel Performance Link imbalance leads to various inefficiencies in traffic and feedback channel performance. The exact tradeoffs are system design dependent. We now discuss some examples. 3G Packet Switched Cellular Networks: We consider the

This full text paper was peer reviewed at the direction of IEEE Communications Society subject matter experts for publication in the ICC 2007 proceedings.

1xEV-DO technology [4] as an example. This system has a CDMA/TDM-scheduled downlink with adaptive server selection for downlink traffic channel and a CDMA uplink with closed-loop power-control and soft handoff for the uplink traffic channel. The feedback channel powers on the downlink are adaptively allocated by the AN, while on the uplink are maintained at a fixed (pre-configured) level wrt the uplink pilot channel by the AT. Sufficient active set size at the AT helps to ensure that the best (maximum traffic SINR sense) uplink cell has a chance to power-control and decode the ATs uplink traffic channel. Since power control is based only on the uplink traffic channel of the AT, the uplink feedback channel gain is configured high enough to ensure reliable performance even under link imbalance. Further, the AT receives a slow filtered single bit (to minimize overhead cost) uplink channel quality feedback signal from the AN, known as DRCLock [5], which it uses in selecting the downlink serving sector. The DRCLock effectively imposes a lower bound on the acceptable uplink imbalance magnitude in the network. Hence, it allows the AN to a) Account for worst-case link imbalance in determining the uplink feedback channel gains, and b) Control the tradeoff between downlink traffic and uplink feedback channel SINRs. 4G Packet Switched Cellular Networks: In some 3GPP2 and 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project) next generation insector orthogonal (both links) technologies [6][7], which are currently in the process of being standardized, it has been proposed to have no soft handoff on either uplink or downlink, for either traffic or feedback channels. These technologies rely instead on adaptive server selection on both the uplink and the downlink for tracking the maximum SINR sectors in each link direction. The AT is allowed to select different serving sectors for each link direction in [6]. If the serving sector on the downlink has a weak associated uplink, then the feedback channels transmitted on this uplink by the AT may have poor performance due to SINR degradation. In order to avoid degradation of the feedback channels, their gain on the uplink needs to be either 1) Chosen based on an upper bound on imbalance magnitude (similar to the 1xEV-DO approach), or 2) dynamically tracked and configured by the AT based on feedback from the AN (similar to the approach in [6]). Note that the latter adds extra complexity, dynamics, and overhead of closed-loop tracking and gain adjustment. Furthermore, in an attempt to simplify and reduce channel tracking hardware resource, some systems such as [7] are being designed with an additional constraint that the same sector has to be chosen as the serving sector for both the uplink and the downlink traffic channels. With this constraint, matters become worse, and the link with the poor SINR in the event of a link imbalance has degraded performance for both traffic and feedback channels on that link. B. Adaptive Server Selection and Soft Handoff Some cellular technologies such as CDMA based IS-2000, and uplink of 1xEV-DO, utilize soft handoff a mechanism where an AT can receive (transmit) data from (to) more than one AN at a time. At the cell edge, soft handoff provides

additional diversity to combat inter-cell interference and channel fading, thereby improving the link reliability and link budget. However, on the downlink, soft handoffs 1) consume extra system resources because multiple ANs serve a single AT, and 2) require scheduler co-ordination in real-time across cells in packet switched cellular networks. Hence 3G [8] and 4G packet switched cellular systems employ adaptive server selection on the downlink instead of soft handoff. In addition, these systems utilize other mechanisms such as link adaptive packet scheduling and physical and/or MAC layer ARQ to improve link reliability and efficiency. In practice, with adaptive server selection, there is always a non-zero delay in the handoff execution. This delay is unavoidable and arises from filtering/hysteresis effects as well as system constraints such as handoff notifications and queue transfers. Recently it has been proposed in various 4G networks [6] [7] to adopt adaptive server selection on the uplink. For AT based server selection on the downlink there is no need for extra feedback from the AN on channel quality as the AT can directly estimate the downlink SINR. However, uplink server selection requires additional fast, reliable, and sufficientresolution feedback on received uplink channel quality from the AN to each AT, e.g., the F-PQICH channel in [6], which may also be used to detect link imbalance by the AT. This feedback however 1) May generate prohibitive downlink overhead cost, and 2) Must efficiently track the cumulative channel and loading dynamics which may change quite rapidly. Further, on the uplink, irrespective of whether a system employs soft handoff or not, an ATs uplink transmission creates inter-cell interference. The presence of link imbalance in practical networks further complicates adaptive server selection mechanisms. The 1xEV-DO technology uses DRCLock for detecting link imbalances at the AT for downlink server selection. Similar concepts have been proposed in other systems [6], [9]. An important advantage of soft handoff is that it inherently increases robustness to link imbalance by enabling multiple sectors to simultaneously track and decode transmissions from an AT, as demonstrated by simulation results in section V-B. Hence it is not surprising that technologies like 1xEV-DO rely on adaptive server selection on the downlink and soft handoff on the uplink. C. Uplink RoT Control versus Computed Load Control Total sector received power must be kept under strict control because each AT sees some or all of it as interference. In CDMA based systems with interference cancellation techniques [10], thermal noise power, other-sector AT power, and uncancelled in-sector AT power is seen as interference. In orthogonal access systems, thermal noise power, and othersector AT power is seen as interference. As sector received power grows, two basic restrictions apply. First, the interference seen by all ATs increases, the edge ATs run out of transmit power, and allocation fairness across ATs suffers, even to the point where some ATs may lose connection. This is the link budget aspect of load control, and is the reason for assuming a specific loading level in link budget analysis and coverage design. Second, the stability of the uplink is strongly related to total sector received power. Stability here refers to the effectiveness in keeping interference power smooth, irrespective of the radio access scheme, which is a key metric

This full text paper was peer reviewed at the direction of IEEE Communications Society subject matter experts for publication in the ICC 2007 proceedings.

for overhead channel performance and traffic channel efficiency. Thus it is vital to control the total sector received power. We shall discuss the effect of link imbalance on two popular control schemes measured Rise-over-Thermal based and Computed Load based. The Rise-over-Thermal (RoT) per receive antenna a at sector s , Z s , a , is defined as the ratio of total received power to thermal noise power at the antenna. The Load per receive antenna a at sector s , Ys ,a , is defined as the ratio of the per receive antenna chip energy for the mth AT summed over all ATs in the network to the total received power at the antenna. Z s , a = Ios , a No s , a (5)

robust and the preferred means of sector load control in deployed systems. V.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Ys ,a = m Ec s ,a ,m Ios , a
between RoT and Load is then given by

(6)

Note that 0 Ys , a < 1 holds true by definition. The relation

Z s , a = 1 (1 Ys , a )

(7)

The RoT as defined in (5) is directly measurable and selfcalibrating over time, provided that the technology implements a periodic short uplink silence duration when all ATs network-wide stop all uplink transmissions for measuring thermal noise power. Technologies like 1xEV-DO implement uplink silence duration [11]. RoT level also has a direct relation to sector power dynamics, for it is an indication of the degree to which received power will react to changes in total sector loading. The Load given by (6) however is not directly measurable, as the per-antenna received chip energy of an AT can be measured only if the AN is reliably tracking the AT. Due to hardware resource limitations, unreliable tracking at low signal strength etc., it is impossible for the AN in practice to reliably track all ATs network-wide. Thus in deployments, Computed Load (CL) is used instead of true sector load, given by

We present sample simulation studies using 1xEV-DORevA as an example technology. These results demonstrate schemes for introducing link imbalance in simulations and show various effects this creates. They are not demonstrative of actual 1xEV-DO performance. The simulations are as per the framework in [12], except for the 1) antenna imbalance and 2) time-varying shadow fading models. Simulation results are shown for 7 cells, 3 sectors per cell, 10 besteffort ATs per sector, the edge cells wrap around as per [12] so that sectors see statistically similar other-sector interference. The ATs are uniformly dropped, with equal number of ATs (=10) served by each sector on the downlink. The channel models and their distribution are as in [12]. We assume one tx, two rcv antennas both at the AN and the AT. In 1xEV-DO, the received uplink pilot SINR (Ecp/Nt) is a good indicator of uplink overhead and traffic SINR (fixed gain wrt the power-controlled pilot), and the received downlink Ecp/Nt at the AT is a good indicator of downlink traffic SINR. Cell is the decoding unit for all uplink channels. We show RoT ccdf as a simple measure of system robustness as per [12], where less variation indicates well controlled interference. A. Uplink AN Receive Antenna Gain Imbalance We model AN receive antenna gain imbalance by reducing the gain of one receive antenna at each sector by a fixed (over the simulation duration) amount DeltaGain. This gain reduction of one antenna leads to a loss in the combined (over antennas) uplink Ecp/Nt (loss need not be same as DeltaGain), and increased variation due to diversity loss. DeltaGain is an exponentially distributed (dB domain) random variable. We have seen from field data that 1dB mean value is a good representation of actual observed antenna gain imbalance. The exponential nature leads to only a few sectors with significant imbalance. Fig.1 shows the time trace of per antenna filtered (singlepole IIR filter, time constant of 4slots, 1slot=5/3msec.) RoT in two sectors. We pick AT67 as an example; in the uplink it is in soft handoff with sectors 4 and 15 from two cells. Fig. 2 shows combined (over receive antennas) downlink and uplink filtered Ecp/Nt (single-pole IIR filter, time constant = 128slots) of AT67 in sectors 4 and 15. Fig. 3 shows, in the first subplot, combined filtered uplink Ecp/Nt at the best downlink and the best uplink cells of AT67; and in the next subplot, the uplink imbalance as per (3). In this setup, we see SINR imbalance at times due to delay in downlink server switching, antenna gain imbalance, and short-term RoT asymmetry. B. Uplink and Downlink Time-Varying Shadow Fading Time-varying shadow (TVS) fading is often used to model link path loss variation in mobile environments [13][14]. However, the standard models do not capture our observation from field data that in FDD systems, the TVS in uplink and

Ys,a = kset of tracked ATs Ec s , a, k Ios , a

(8)

Note that since 0 Ys,a Ys ,a < 1 is always true, systems using CL have to be conservative in loading the sector (via setting a lower target CL) in order to compensate for any unmeasured received power. The salient effect of link imbalance on CL control scheme is that the set of tracked ATs may be unreliable in reflecting the actual sector load. This is because an AT can be tracked on the uplink by the AN only when the feedback channels on the downlink can be reliably received by the AT. In the presence of link imbalance, the AN cannot track an AT (due to low downlink SINR) although the AT may contribute a large load on the uplink to the AN. Thus the CL in the sector will be much lower than the true Load in the sector as demonstrated by simulation results in section V-C. Note that RoT is robust to link imbalance as the total received power at the antenna is directly measured at the sector. Hence, measured RoT reflects true sector loading even in the presence of link imbalance. It is for this reason that measurement-based RoT control scheme is

This full text paper was peer reviewed at the direction of IEEE Communications Society subject matter experts for publication in the ICC 2007 proceedings.

downlink are not always perfectly correlated. Unable to find an appropriate model in the literature we propose a model in [15], which we summarize here. We assume TVS in each link direction (between cell-AT pair) to be a 1st order IIR Gaussian process in the dB domain with a standard deviation of dB and cross-cell shadow correlation of based on [13]. In our model we add the ability to further control 1) The same-cell shadow correlation across uplink and downlink (typically

=8.9dB, =0.5, [0.9,1]), and 2) The cross-cell cross-link imbalance correlation which directly controls the statistics of the shadow difference of the best uplink and downlink cells. Let SDn ,i and SU n ,i denote the shadow process sample at time slot n in cell i for downlink and uplink resp. Then,

(1 )(1 ) SU n ,i = X n + Yn,i + CU n (1 ) + + U n ,i (1 )(1 ) where, X n = C n + , Yn ,i = Z n ,i (1 ) . The

following restrictions apply for consistency of the model 0 1 , 0 1 , and ( ) (1 ) (1 ) .
Also, each of the processes C n (common), Z n,i (cellcommon), CD n (downlink-common), CU n (uplink-common),
Dn ,i (per-cell downlink), and U n,i (per-cell uplink), are 1st

SD n,i = X n + Yn ,i + CDn (1 ) + + Dn ,i

order independent IIR Gaussian processes in the dB domain, e.g., process C n given by C n +1 = (1 )C n + WnC , where velocity dependent = (ln 2)( Speedkmph) (1200)(3.6)d , decorrelation length is d (usually d=20m), normalization
factor = 2 1 , and Wn ~ N (0,1) is i.i.d. (across time and
Fig. 1. Per receive antenna RoT in sector # 4 and sector # 15.

all variables) real valued Gaussian random variables. Further,

=
E[ SDi , SD j ] E[ SDi2 ]E[ SD 2 ] j = E[ SU i , SU j ] E[ SU i2 ]E[ SU 2 ] j

, =
.

E[ SDi , SU i ] E[ SDi2 ]E[ SU i2 ]

and, =

E[ SDi SD j , SU i SU j ] E[(SDi SD j ) 2 ]E[(SU i SU j ) 2 ]

Fig. 2. Uplink and Downlink Pilot SINR of AT# 67 in sector # 4 and 15.

In Fig. 4 we see that with RoT control and maximum active set size limited to four (MaxAS=4), system is robust (same 1% RoT ccdf point) even with TVS and imbalance. In 1xEV-DO uplink, soft handoff enables well-controlled RoT by reducing throughput during moments of link imbalance autonomously. Thus wrt the no TVS case, we see a sector throughput loss of 6.24% and 12.15% with TVS, =1.0 and =0.9. We see that both robustness and sector throughput degrade, when we reduce the maximum active set size to one (MaxAS=1) which forces uplink traffic to be transmitted (and power-controlled) on the best downlink sector in these sims. This is because the other-sector interference power increases due to 1) only one power-controlling sector, 2) delayed server switching with TVS, =1.0, and 3) link imbalance with TVS, =0.9. Fig. 5 first subplot shows the percent of ATs with their weighted (by percent of time) averaged uplink imbalance magnitude (as per (3)) over the simulation duration. A small percentage of ATs get stuck in bad locations for the entire run in the case with no TVS leading to the tail in the plot. With TVS and link imbalance a larger percentage of ATs are in non-zero average uplink imbalance, but the tail improves as no AT remains stuck in a bad location for the entire run. Fig. 5 second subplot shows the cdf of AT average transmit uplink pilot power to demonstrate the link budget hit of TVS and link imbalance. C. Uplink RoT Control versus CL Control In the simulation results shown in Fig. 6 without TVS the

Fig. 3. Uplink cell Ecp/Nt and uplink imbalance magnitude for AT# 67.

This full text paper was peer reviewed at the direction of IEEE Communications Society subject matter experts for publication in the ICC 2007 proceedings.

sector load threshold for CL method (=0.52) was chosen so as to normalize the 1% RoT ccdf point between CL and direct RoT methods. Now using the same threshold for CL, we next turn on TVS with link imbalance (=0.9) in the simulations. Since now the untracked power in the CL case increases from the no TVS case, the 1% RoT ccdf point for CL exceeds that of direct RoT when the same threshold is used for CL. This is

because direct RoT controls the true received power at the sector, while CL controls the received power only from the set of ATs that the sector is actively tracking. VI.
SUMMARY

The presence of link imbalance has been frequently observed in practical deployments. However this problem has received limited attention in literature, and most wireless simulation frameworks used for system studies [12][13], do not simulate link imbalance. In this paper we have provided discussion and simulation results to motivate the need for deeper probing into the role of link imbalance. We also demonstrate via simulation results that soft-handoff increases system robustness to link imbalance, and that CL method of interference control is not desirable but direct RoT method is. In this paper, we have not attempted to precisely quantify and compare the performance degradation across various technologies in the presence of link imbalance, or the exact physics of phenomena leading to link imbalance these remain topics for future studies. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Fig. 4. CCDF of RoT (as per [12]) with RoT control and TVS.

The authors thank N.Bhushan, R.Attar, D.Zhang, and M.Yavuz of Qualcomm Inc. for their insightful comments; and J.Price of UCSD for rigorous simulation work that was used in many illustrations. The authors are grateful to P. Black of Qualcomm Inc. for valuable discussions and suggestions. REFERENCES
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Fig. 5. %AT with uplink Ecp/Nt imbalance magnitude, and CDF of TxPwr.

[7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15]

Fig. 6. CCDF of RoT (as per [12]) comparing RoT and Load control.