Soft Dropping Power Control

This work considers a power control algorithm for cellular communications systems in which a user’s link quality objective, as measured by signal to interference ratio (SIR), varies with its transmitter power. In particular, as increased interference or reduced uplink gain leads a mobile to raise its transmitter power, that mobile lowers its SIR target. In this way, the likelihood of an infeasible power control problem in which users’ transmitter powers rise to maximum is reduced. This graceful degradation of the SIR is termed soft dropping. Convergence proofs for a soft dropping power control algorithm are outlined. Simulation results demonstrate performance improvements over fixed target SIR algorithms.