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2G A-Z Power Control PDF
2G A-Z Power Control PDF
MASTER'S THESIS
Fredrik Hägglund
Fredrik Hägglund
i
Contents
1 Introduction 1
1.1 General . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Purpose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.3 Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.4 Delimitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.5 Outline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2 Background 3
2.1 Evolution of cellular networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.2 The GSM network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.3 Radio network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.4 Impairments to radio transmission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.4.1 Fast fading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.4.2 Path loss . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.4.3 Shadow fading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.4.4 Time dispersion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.4.5 Co-channel interference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3 Power control 9
3.1 General . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3.2 Current power control algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.3 EMR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
3.4 Problem statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
4 Simulator description 14
4.1 Simulation model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
4.2 Basic functionality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
4.2.1 Propagation model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
4.2.2 Fast fading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
4.2.3 Frequency hopping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
4.2.4 Discontinuous transmission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
4.2.5 Quality estimation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
ii
5 Tested algorithms 20
5.1 General . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
5.2 Parameter settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
5.3 Outer loop based on EMR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
5.3.1 Outer loop based on frame erasure rate . . . . . . . . 22
5.3.2 Outer loop based on coefficient of variation . . . . . . 25
5.3.3 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
5.4 Outer loop based on power distribution . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
5.4.1 Power distribution analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
5.4.2 Simulated algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
6 Discussion 39
6.1 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
6.2 Further studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
A List of Abbreviations 42
iii
List of Figures
5.1 The existing power control in GSM extended with the outer
loop. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
5.2 Block scheme for the existing power control algorithm ex-
tended with an outer loop based on EMR. . . . . . . . . . . 22
5.3 The outer loop when the control algorithm is based on FER. 23
5.4 Satisfied users at different traffic loads. . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
5.5 BER and CV of BER is plotted against each other. Every
dot gives the BER and CV of BER for each mobile at each
measurement time. An approximation of a level curve for
F ER_target = 1% is also in the figure. . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
5.6 A plot over how CV_BEP changes around the average line
for one single mobile during a call. The call lasts for nearly 7
seconds and it is impossible to see a trend for the CV_BEP
values. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
5.7 Histograms for two different occasions. In the left plot the
system has experienced a relatively low traffic load and in the
right a relatively high traffic load. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
iv
5.8 Number of satisfied users for a specific condition for different
qdes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
5.9 The usage of power control and the amount of satisfied users
plotted for different qdes. The traffic load is fixed and low. . 32
5.10 The plot shows the regulating fraction of the transmitted pow-
ers and the number of satisfied users for a high traffic load.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
5.11 The plot shows the regulating fraction of the transmitted pow-
ers and the number of satisfied users for a high traffic load.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
5.12 The difference between number of mobiles transmitting on
maximum effect and the number of mobiles transmitting on
minimum effect for some different traffic loads. . . . . . . . . 35
5.13 A block scheme of the outer loop based on the usage of power
control. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
5.14 The qdes value is adjusted to a proper value, depending on
the current environment in the cell. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
5.15 The number of satisfied users with and without an outer loop
in the power control. The result with no power control is also
displayed. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
v
Chapter 1
Introduction
This section will give a brief introduction to the subject handled in this work.
The purpose, method and the delimitations are also in this section. Finally,
an outline for the report is presented.
1.1 General
GSM (Global System for Mobile Communication) is a mobile system that is
globally used. In GSM, and in other traditional mobile systems a tradeoff be-
tween different goals is necessary to achieve the optimal system performance.
Generally, high speech quality, high capacity and low power consumption are
major goals in cellular radio communication systems. Power control is one
of several techniques used to achieve these goals. Power control regulates
the signal strength to reduce the overall interference.
One of the parameters that control the power level are a target value
controlling the desired quality. Instead of setting this target value for each
separate case, for example different radio environment or speech codecs, there
are some benefits in making the control of this target value automatic. How
the target value should be set may depend on many variables, such as the
interference from other cells, the distance between the mobile station and
the base station, the traffic load, the total amount of radiated power etc.
Therefore, there is an interest in making the setting of the target value
automatic and dynamic.
1.2 Purpose
The purpose of this work is to find out whether a method, based on the
additional information from for example the new standardized measurement
report, could improve the current power control by reducing the hard param-
eter predefinitions. This could be done by making it possible to set the target
value automatically. The method should improve, or at least preserve the
1
performance of the existing power control. The results of the work includes
recommendations on algorithm design, parameter tuning and comments of
performance in general.
1.3 Method
The method chosen to fulfill the purpose was to automatically adjust the
target value in an “outer loop”, using additional information from for ex-
ample the enhanced measurement report. Initially some analysis was done,
principally about how information concerning speech quality should be used,
but also what kind of information to use. Several different fundamental algo-
rithms have been developed and a simple evaluation determines whether the
algorithms have been excluded or if they were relevant for further analysis.
A model has been made for each of the relevant algorithms, which shows
how the additional information controls the desired target value. Adjusting
the signal strength to track this target value sets the desired speech quality.
Input values, which are decided from the outer loop, that adjusts the
signal strength have been tested and evaluated. This means that simulations
have been done to verify the choices of input values in different situations. It
should be easy to change the input values. The simulation tool that has been
used is an advanced existing simulator at Ericsson Research called FHRUNE.
1.4 Delimitations
The work was delimited to only look at an outer loop that controls the qual-
ity target value, which is an input to the existing power control algorithm.
This means that there are possibilities that other solutions could give better
performance for the outer loop. But such algorithms have not been examined
in this work.
Another limitation was to only look at speech transmission and not
packet data transmission.
1.5 Outline
In chapter two the background to the subject will be presented. Chapter
three describes the existing power control algorithm, and a problem state-
ment that will more precisely describe the problem. In chapter four the
simulation model is described and how the simulations where done to model
the different approaches of the outer loop will be presented in chapter five.
The results of the simulations and an analysis of the results will also be pre-
sented in chapter five. Finally, in chapter six a discussion is presented with
the conclusions and some ideas about future work.
2
Chapter 2
Background
The background theories about mobile systems, the GSM system, radio net-
work and impairments to radio transmission are presented briefly in this
section to give an initial understanding.
3
communication worldwide.
4
PSTN
GMSC
MSC
BSC
MS MS
BTS BTS
MS MS
5
frequencies used in one cell need to be reused in another cell at a certain
distance away. Users that use the same frequency will interfere with each
other. A group of cells that together uses all the available frequencies in
the system is called a cluster of cells. Clusters repeated over and over again
forms a cellular network. A schematic illustration of a cellular network is
seen in Figure 2.2, where the cells are represented as hexagons for simplicity.
The frequencies used in a cluster are divided into frequency groups. How
many frequencies there are in each group is dependent on the total number of
available frequencies and the required reuse factor. Different reuse patterns
can be formed but some examples are 4/12 or 3/9. For example, 4/12 means
that all the available frequencies are divided into 12 frequency groups, one
for each cell, which is located at 4 sites with 3 base stations each. In a system
like this the reuse factor is 12. As seen in the figure below each base station
site has three cells and is using directional antennas. [2]
Figure 2.2: A 4/12 frequency reuse pattern. The gray cells are using the
same frequency group and hence mobiles from these cells using the same
frequency could interfere with each other.
6
a connection one measurement that could be used is the carrier to interfer-
ence ratio (C/I). This measurement is the relation between the carrier signal
power C and the interference power I. The carrier signal power, in dB, for
one connection is defined as
7
2.4.2 Path loss
The amplitude of a signal diminishes when a signal travel further away from
the transmitter. This phenomenon is referred to as path loss. Path loss can
make it difficult to get enough signal strength in a large cell. An advantage
with path loss is the natural decrease in interference from other cells. This
is the principle on which the reuse in a cellular system is built.
8
Chapter 3
Power control
This chapter describes power control in general and the existing power con-
trol algorithm. A description of the EMR (Enhanced Measurement Report)
is also presented. The chapter ends with a discussion about the problem and
how the problem might be solved.
3.1 General
Power control (PC) refers to the strategies or techniques required to adjust
the transmitted power. Power control regulates the transmitted power to
achieve a desired signal strength. A mobile far away from a base station
requires a stronger transmitted signal than a mobile close to a base station. If
the speech quality is better than necessary for one mobile the signal strength
for that specific mobile will be decreased. This implies that the system will
be improved, because of the reduction in interference. The single mobile will
also experience a decrease in battery consumption when transmitting to the
base station. This is the main idea with power control. Power control is
used both in uplink and in downlink between base station and mobile. In
this work only downlink is described. The principle is however equal.
The transmission power p from the base station to the mobile, Figure
3.1, should be controlled to optimize the system. The power should be high
enough to achieve a sufficient carrier signal power C at the mobile station
and low enough to minimize interference I at other mobiles. The transmitted
powers from base stations to mobiles are controlled by the power control
algorithm developed for the GSM network.
9
p1 p2
C C
I I
Figure 3.1: Transmission power p1 and p2 from base stations to mobile sta-
tions. Each mobile experience a carrier signal power C and interference I.
10
variables, rxqual and rxlev are filtered with nonlinear exponential filters in
order to eliminate variations of temporal nature. The measurement reporting
causes a delay that typically is three periods.
The controlling parameter for rxqual in the regulation is qdes, and for
rxlev the parameter ssdes. The qdes value is the target value that specifies
the desired quality. Internally, qdes and rxqual are converted to C/I-valus,
expressed in dB according to Table 3.1. Linear interpolation is used to realize
C/I.
Table 3.1: The conversion between qdes, rxqual and C/I. The unit dtqu
stands for deci-transformed quality units.
qdes [dtqu] 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70
rxqual 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
C/I [dB] 23 19 17 15 13 11 8 4
The instruction for the change in power for the regulation is given by
where α and β is the path loss respective quality compensation and qdesDB
and rxqualDBf iltered are the qdes and rxqual mapped to C/I as in table 3.1
[6]. The power level down regulation order is then given by
pu
P L = IN T (− ) (3.2)
2
where INT truncates the power level to a higher value. P L could have values
from 0 to 15, and that represent a down regulation of 0 to 30 dB, which could
be seen in the final output power level by the BTS,
11
mobiles. These mobiles then require higher signal power and the interference
at the first mobile is increased. Finally all mobiles will be transmitting with
maximum power, and this effect it is called the party effect. The existing
power control algorithm prevents this by just regulating towards the target
value. This is done by setting β < 1 in equation 3.1 [6].
To get a good understanding in the power regulation, knowledge about
how much the output power will be down regulated for certain signal strength
or quality is necessary. Hence, the dependence between, signal strength,
quality and down regulation is important. A way of studying these quantities
is in a plot describing the behavior of the algorithm. This could be seen in
Figure 3.2. How great the down regulation is, depends on the values of
rxqual and rxlev.
Figure 3.2: Principle for down regulation. The values rxlev and rxqual are
the measured values before any exponential filtering.
In the figure above it is shown how the power is down regulated. The
controlling values for the desired signal strength and quality, ssdes and qdes,
are set to define the point where the two separate planes of the algorithm
meet, point marked 1 in Figure 3.2, and the positions of the planes, marked
2 and 3 in Figure 3.2. Point 1 is at approximately rxqual = 3, which is equal
12
to qdes = 30, and rxlev = 14. Plane 2 regulates mainly against the signal
strength to avoid lower power than the noise floor and plane 3 regulates
mainly towards quality.
3.3 EMR
The EMR (Enhanced Measurement Report) is a standardized measurement
report that contains additional information compared to the earlier mea-
surement report. Like the old measurement report it contains information
of the performance of the transmission, for example rxlev and rxqual. The
additional information in the EMR are the mean and the CV (coefficient
of variation) of the bit error probability (BEP). These values are called
MEAN_BEP and CV_BEP, and they are calculated as an average over
the frames in a measurement period. The CV_BEP has a general definition
as the standard deviations divided by the mean value.
13
Chapter 4
Simulator description
In this chapter the simulation model is described, for example how the simu-
lation environment looks like and how some functions works. The simulator
has been developed at Ericsson Research and is named FHRUNE and it has
been used in all simulations.
14
and allocation for new mobiles or hand-over for already existing mobiles
are also taken care of in the beginning of the main loop. Finally, before
entering the inner loop a number of parameters for both mobiles and base
stations are updated, for example the transmit powers. In the inner loop
some packet scheduling are done and then on burst level implemented by
matrix operations the C/I values for all mobiles are calculated. The C/I
values are used to estimate the quality for both speech and data users. When
the inner loop is finished data is extracted and logged. Finally in the main
loop, users with low speech quality are removed together with completed
calls and all remaining mobiles are given a new position and speed.
Initiation
Measurement
period
Create traffic
Path loss calculations
Allocation and blocking
Initiate and update user specific data
Frame
period
Packet scheduling
15
4.2 Basic functionality
The functions in the real GSM system are modeled by the system simula-
tor FHRUNE. Some of the basic functionalities are described below. The
simulator must both simulate the environment and the GSM system. The
propagation model and the fast fading are typical parts used to model the
environment. Frequency hopping, discontinuous transmission (DTX) and
power control are all functions in the GSM system and strives to improve
the system performance.
16
4.2.3 Frequency hopping
Frequency hopping is an important option in GSM systems by which network
performance can be enhanced. Consider co-channel interference between
different connections. Not all of the slots are in use on all of the physical
channels on each site where they are reused. If we can take each caller on
a particular sector and jump them from frequency to frequency, then each
user runs a far lower risk of suffering from co-channel interference. This is
because the co-channel interference is shared by many users.
The simulator gives a possibility to choose between GSM pseudo-random
sequences or ideal sequences from the MATLAB random number generator.
In Figure 4.2 an example of frequency hopping sequences for some calls and
some bursts during a measurement period is shown. In the figure, GSM
pseudo-random sequences are used. For example, call 1 is transmitting on
channel 7 in the first burst, but changes to transmit on channel 3 in the
second burst. This hopping between which carrier frequency to transmit on
continues throughout the call.
call 1 7 3 7 . .
2 6 2 8 . .
3 1 5 3 . .
4 . . .
5 . .
6
.
.
Channel numbers
17
4.2.5 Quality estimation
The C/I-values that is calculated in the inner loop for each burst is one
kind of quality measurement used in FHRUNE. The C/I-values describes
the relationship between the signal carrier power and the interference power.
However, the simulation model is designed to have a number of different
quality measurements available. In the sections below some definitions of
quality measurements used in this work are presented.
A better quality measure than the C/I-values is one that is based on
a method that maps the C/I-values to frame error probabilities for speech.
The C/I-values are used as input to a process that decides if each frame
is successfully received or not. These mappings are the result of link level
simulations and the process could be seen in Figure 4.3 and is described
below.
C/I
table lookup
BER
µ ,σ
FEP
random process
FER
In the first step of the process all the C/I-values are mapped to bit er-
ror probabilities for each burst, in other words each individual C/I-value
correspond to an individual bit error probability. The mapping is imple-
mented as a one-dimensional lookup table. The bit error probability values
are grouped in speech frames, and the mean µ, and the standard deviation
σ, are calculated for each frame as
n
1X
µ= BEPi , (4.1)
n i
18
v
n
1 X
u
(BEPi − µ)2 .
u
σ=t (4.2)
n−1 i
The values BEPi are the bit error probabilities for each burst. The cal-
culations are done per frame and since each frame consists of eight bursts,
n is equal to 8. The mean and standard deviation are then used in the
two-dimensional lookup table, Figure 4.4, to get FEP. One value of error
probability is extracted from each pair of mean and standard deviation. [7]
0.8
0.6
FEP
0.4
0.2
0
0.5
0.4 0.5
0.3 0.4
0.2 0.3
0.2
0.1
0.1
0 0
std
mean
Figure 4.4: The lookup table for mapping mean and standard deviation to
FEP shown as a figure.
The FEP values are used in a random process to decide if each frame
is erroneous or not. In the random process a uniformly distributed random
vector is compared to the FEP according to
19
Chapter 5
Tested algorithms
5.1 General
The motivation for including an outer loop to the existing power control
algorithm is that bit error rate (BER) is not necessarily well correlated to
quality. BER is the measurement used in the current power control to cal-
culate rxqual. Instead, for example the percentages of lost frames are more
relevant, since the effect of modulation, coding and interleaving is included.
The information that should be used, and how it should be used, depends
on the design of the outer loop. One possibility is the frame erasure rate
(FER). However, the objective with the outer loop is to assign a qdes value
for the existing power control algorithm to track. In Figure 5.1 the block
scheme over the existing power control in GSM is extended with a block for
the outer loop. The existing power control could be seen as an inner loop.
The outer loop may use information from the EMR or other measurements
to produce a qdes value for the inner loop to track.
20
Target qdes Current PC Power
Environment
algorithm
Algorithm Inner
RxQual loop
Additional
information Measurement report
Outer loop
Figure 5.1: The existing power control in GSM extended with the outer loop.
The purpose of the outer loop is to serve the inner loop with a dynamic
qdes value that changes automatically. The measurement report should give
the outer loop additional information about the current quality in the system.
The mean and the standard deviation of the bit error rate is additional
information in the enhanced measurement report and the outer loop may
use these measurements to adjust the qdes value. A couple of different
approaches of how to use the information are tested in this work. Algorithms
are set up, simulated and evaluated.
21
Table 5.1: Fixed parameters that is used in the simulations.
Algorithm
RxQual EMR
MEAN_BEP
CV_BEP
Figure 5.2: Block scheme for the existing power control algorithm extended
with an outer loop based on EMR.
22
a specific qdes value is used for each specific mobile. Hence, qdes could be
different for each mobile depending on the quality of each connection. The
outer loop strives to increase quality in each specific mobile. In Figure 5.3
the blocks in the outer loop with the proper input values are displayed.
qdes old
FER_filtered
Filtering
FER
MEAN_BEP
Extracting CV_BEP
quality
measurement
Figure 5.3: The outer loop when the control algorithm is based on FER.
The input values to the outer loop are partly estimated from the EMR
and partly defined by a user as a fixed value. From the measurement report
information to define the FER is used, as described in section 4.2.5 above.
The MEAN_BEP and the CV_BEP could be converted to the mean and
std in Figure 4.4 and hence be used to extract FER in the simulator. The
mean is equal to MEAN_BEP, and the std is calculated as,
σ = CV _BEP ∗ µ (5.1)
where σ and µ are the mean and the std. However, in the simulator a value
of FER calculated for each frame is used.
FER is than used to calculate a value that is compared to the fixed target
FER value, F ER_target = 0.8%, defined by the user. The fixed target FER
corresponds to the percentage of useless frames that could be accepted. An
exponential filtering will be done on the FER for each single mobile,
where α = 0.5. This result is then compared to the F ER_target to get the
difference and then multiplied with a constant C to get the difference in the
proper unit. The conversion constant is also used to minimize the effect of
quick changes in FER and will also decrease the change in qdes. Finally, the
change is added to the old qdes values,
23
qdes = qdesold + qdeschange , (5.3)
where qdeschange is defined as
24
FER_target = 0.8%, alpha = 0.5
100
PC without OL
PC with OL
no PC
95
Satisfied users [%] (FER < 1%)
90
85
80
75
0 5 10 15
Traffic load [Average users per cell]
In the figure above it is obvious that there are more satisfied users when
the system uses a power control algorithm without an outer loop based on
FER. Although, the performance is better with the outer loop compared to
when no power control is used. This means that the effect of the power
control algorithm is decreased when this outer loop is included.
25
values of the standard deviation it is possible to have a higher value of the
mean and still maintain at an acceptable FER level. For a specific target
FER, F ER_target = 1%, a desired level curve could be extracted. In Figure
5.5, a plot over how the coefficient of variation of BER varies in relation to
BER is shown. CV of BER and BER is directly mapped from the bit values
CV_BEP and MEAN_BEP. In the figure there is also an example of how
an approximated desired target FER level curve could look like.
3.5
FER=1%
3
Coefficient of variation of BER
2.5
1.5
0.5
0
0 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25
BER [%]
Figure 5.5: BER and CV of BER is plotted against each other. Every dot
gives the BER and CV of BER for each mobile at each measurement time.
An approximation of a level curve for F ER_target = 1% is also in the
figure.
26
The task is to examine whether the mobiles have CV_BEP that is higher
or lower than the average and change the qdes value according to that.
However, there are some problems. First, it is very hard to create a function
f (CV _BEP ) that is independent of MEAN_BEP, in other words there are
hard to find all the equivalent values for the CV_BEP. Even if it would be
possible the CV_BEP for a single mobile varies too much from one time to
another. In other words at one time CV_BEP is higher than the average
and next time lower. In Figure 5.6 a plot over how CV of BER varies around
the average line for one mobile. The dots represent the values in the first
measurement period, the second measurement period and so on. This figure
shows that a control in this way is nearly impossible. Even if it could be
possible for some mobiles to say that CV of BER is high or low, the change
in qdes is very small. This is because the target FER level curve only gives
small changes in BER for a change in CV of BER.
The average line and values for one single mobile during a call
4
14 13
3.5
3
Coefficient of variation of BER
9
3
2.5
6
11 10
12
2 1
7 8 Average line
5
2
1.5
4
0.5
0
0 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25
BER [%]
Figure 5.6: A plot over how CV_BEP changes around the average line for
one single mobile during a call. The call lasts for nearly 7 seconds and it is
impossible to see a trend for the CV_BEP values.
27
5.3.3 Summary
None of the methods where the outer loop is based on EMR shows any
improvment to the total system. Using FER and controlling qdes for every
single mobile contradicts the existing power control by not considering the
party effect. This implies that the algorithm no longer strives for maximum
system quality.
Removing MEAN_BEP and only using CV_BEP as the input to the
outer loop removes the possibilities for the same drawbacks as in the previous
method. However, this method is hard to realize, very unstable and if it
would work only give small changes in qdes.
The methods for the outer loop using EMR as input are left behind and
other solutions for input measurements are considered.
28
number of pmax − number of pmin
P Cdif f = . (5.7)
total number of p
This value will be positive if many mobiles are transmitting with high power
and negative if many mobiles are transmitting with low power.
The idea is that if a high number of mobiles transmit with a power in
between the minimum and maximum value, then good system quality should
be achieved because there is high usage of power control. This holds only
if high usage of power control implies good system quality, in other words
if usage of power control correlates with the number of satisfied users. To
examine this some simulations on the existing system with fixed qdes has
been done.
In Figure 5.7, the power distribution are displayed in histograms. The
histograms are from two different occasions, one with a relatively low traffic
load and the other with a relatively high traffic load. As we see in the figure,
for the same qdes, when there are higher traffic load, a lot of mobiles are
transmitting on maximum effect. If the method could regulate the algorithm
to decrease the powers for some of those mobiles a higher regulating fraction
would be accomplished. This is the idea of how this method should work.
29
Low load High load
30 30
25 25
20 20
Number of users [%]
10 10
5 5
0 0
16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30
Power [dBm] Power [dBm]
Figure 5.7: Histograms for two different occasions. In the left plot the system
has experienced a relatively low traffic load and in the right a relatively high
traffic load.
The correlation between the regulating fraction and the number of satis-
fied users gives a hint of whether there is a relation between the transmitted
power distribution and quality. As mentioned before, regulating fraction is
defined as the amount of powers that is not transmitting on minimum or
maximum effect. The number of satisfied users is defined as the amount of
mobiles with the average FER, during the lifetime of a connection, lower
than one percent, as defined in section 5.3.1.
In Figure 5.8 the amount of satisfied users are plotted against qdes for
a specific traffic load. The figure below shows how the amount of satisfied
users changes by an adjustment of qdes. This plot is for a situation with fixed
environment conditions. The qdes value that implies the highest amount of
satisfied users may however, vary with the environment conditions.
30
Satisfied users for different qdes
100
95
Number of satisfied users [%]
90
85
80
75
70
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70
qdes
Figure 5.8: Number of satisfied users for a specific condition for different
qdes.
The correlation between the regulating fraction and the number of sat-
isfied users gives a hint of whether this method could be useful or not. .
In Figure 5.9 these two parameters are plotted against qdes for a fixed low
traffic load.
31
Amount of users for different qdes, low load
95 100
90
85
50
80
75
Satisfied users
Regulating fraction
70 0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70
qdes
Figure 5.9: The usage of power control and the amount of satisfied users
plotted for different qdes. The traffic load is fixed and low.
The figure above shows that the maximum value for the both lines ap-
pear at approximately the same value of qdes, and the curves have similar
appearence. This high correlation indicates a relation between the regulating
fraction of the transmitted powers and the number of satisfied users. This
means that information of the power distribution could be used to increase
the amount of satisfied users. If the system strives to find the value of qdes
that gives the highest regulating fraction, this will also imply that the sys-
tem achieves the highest number of satisfied users. The same situation as
above is plotted in Figure 5.10, but with a higher load. In this plot the both
maximum values appear approximately at the same value of qdes. Obvious
from these two figures is that an increase in traffic load decreases both the
number of satisfied users and the regulating fraction.
32
Amount of users for different qdes, medium load
95 100
90
85
50
80
75
Satisfied users
Regulating fraction
70 0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70
qdes
Figure 5.10: The plot shows the regulating fraction of the transmitted powers
and the number of satisfied users for a high traffic load.
The same situation as above is plotted in Figure 5.11, but with a even
higher traffic load. In this plot the both maximum values do not appear at
the same value of qdes. However, the results points to a relation between
the number of satisfied users and the regulating fraction of the transmitted
powers.
33
Amount of users for different qdes, high load
95 100
90
85
50
80
75
Satisfied users
Regulating fraction
70 0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70
qdes
Figure 5.11: The plot shows the regulating fraction of the transmitted powers
and the number of satisfied users for a high traffic load.
Figure 5.12 below shows plots of the difference, P Cdif f , for some differ-
ent traffic loads. A high value, in other words a high difference, means that
many mobiles transmit with maximum effect, which imply that a change in
qdes is desirable. Achieving the value zero correspond to finding the optimal
value of qdes for this situation.
34
Difference between no. of max and no. of min powers
100
Low load
Medium load
High load
80
60
40
PCdiff [%]
20
−20
−40
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70
qdes
From the figure above it is visible that the lines for the different traffic
load are almost linear and have the same slopes. Assuming that they in
fact are linear with the same slope means that it is simple to adjust qdes
according to the difference. A change in P Cdif f implies a change in qdes. If
the optimal values for the difference is zero this plots could be compared to
the plots showing the regulating fraction in Figure 5.9 to 5.11. The maximum
values of the regulating fraction appears at higher values when the traffic
load is increased. The same behaviour could be seen in Figure 5.12. Where
the lines crosses zero appears not exactly at the same qdes as where the
regulating fraction has the maximum value, for the same traffic load.
35
between the number of mobiles transmitting with the maximum respectively
minimum power, P Cdif f . The block scheme for this method is shown in
Figure 5.13.
C qdes change qdes
qdes old
PCdiff_average
Averaging
PCdiff
Figure 5.13: A block scheme of the outer loop based on the usage of power
control.
OLtime
1
P Cdif fi ∗ e(−(OLtime −i)) .
X
P Cdif f _average = (5.9)
OLtime i=1
36
loop uses a fixed qdes value, which obviously is not the optimal value most
of the times.
60
50
40
qdes
30
20
10
0
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180
time [s]
Figure 5.14: The qdes value is adjusted to a proper value, depending on the
current environment in the cell.
37
Number of frequencies = 27, qdesinit = 45
100
no PC
PC without OL
PC with OL
95
Amount of satisfied users [%]
90
85
80
75
0 5 10 15
Traffic load [Average users per cell]
Figure 5.15: The number of satisfied users with and without an outer loop
in the power control. The result with no power control is also displayed.
38
Chapter 6
Discussion
This chapter contains the conclusions of this work. A part will also propose
some ideas for future work.
6.1 Conclusions
It has been shown in this work that the power control algorithm extended
with an outer loop is a potential method to increase the performance of the
power control and increase the system performance. However, the outer loop
performance is depending on which parameters used for input measurements
and how they are used.
Using frame erasure rate (FER) as the quality measurement and adjust-
ing a specific qdes for every connection implies some problems. The main
problem, in this case, is that the entire control algorithm strives to get the
same quality for each mobile, which does not imply maximum system quality.
Instead, the algorithm is shown to have effects that eliminate the essential
principle of power backoff to avoid the so called party effect, and is therefore
not recommended. It has also been shown that the coefficient of variation of
the bit error probability (CV_BEP) has a little effect on how qdes should
be adjusted.
The most promising algorithm in this work is the one using the power
distribution as the input parameter to the outer loop. It is shown that there
is high correlation between the number of satisfied users and the number of
users within the regulating window, i.e. the number of users not limited by
the maximum or minimum power levels. The final proposed algorithm has
the difference between maximum and minimum transmitted powers as the
controlling parameter. The result is an algorithm that changes qdes as the
traffic load changes.
39
6.2 Further studies
• The power distribution algorithm is in this work implemented and eval-
uated using information from the entire system. It would be intresting
to use information from each cell instead.
• The algorithm should be tested for mixed services, e.g. AMR FR/HR.
40
Bibliography
[5] J.Tisal. ’The GSM network - GPRS evolution: one step closer towards
UMTS’. Second edition. Wiley, Chichester, England, 2001.
[7] Håkan Olofsson. “Improved Interface Between Link Level and System
Level Simulations Applied to GSM”. ICUPC ’97. 1997.
41
Appendix A
List of Abbreviations
3G 3rd Generation
BEP Bit Error Probability
BER Bit Error Rate
BSC Base Station Controller
BTS Base Tranceiver Station
C/I Carrier to Interference ration
CV Coefficient of Variation
DTX Discontinous Transmission
EDGE Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution
EMR Enhanced Measurement Report
FEP Frame Error Probability
FER Frame Erasure Rate
FDMA Frequency Division Multiple Access
GMSC Gateway Mobile services Switching Center
GMSK Gaussian Minimum Shift Keying
GPRS Global Packet Radio Services
GSM Global System for Mobile communication
ISI Inter Symbol Interference
MS Mobile Station
MSC Mobile services Switching Center
PC Power Control
PSK Phase Shift Keying
PSTN Public Switched Telephone Network
TDMS Time Division Multiple Access
42