Network Assisted Power Control for Wireless Data

The cellular telephone success story prompts the wireless communications community to turn its attention to other information services, many of them in the category of "wireless data" communications. One lesson of cellular telephone network operation is that effective power control is essential to promote system quality and efficiency. In recent we have applied microeconomic theories to power control taking into account notions of utility and pricing. Our earlier work has shown that this new approach to power control for wireless data performs better than traditional techniques applied for voice signals. However, the operating points of such a strategy result in an unfair equilibrium in that users operate with unequal signal-to-interference ratios. Further, the power control algorithms required to achieve such operating points are more complex than the simple signal-to-interference ratio balancing algorithms for voice. In this paper, we introduce a new concept, Network Assisted Power Control (NAPC) that maximizes utilities for users while maintaining equal signal-to-interference ratios for all users. The power control algorithm is easily implemented via signal-to-interference ratio balancing with the assistance of the network that broadcasts the common signal-to-interference ratio target.