SIR-Based Power Control in a CDMA System

Sirikiat Ariyavisitakul

Bellcore, Radio Research Department

R e d Bank,NJ 07701

Abstract - Power control is essential in the use of direct-sequence complicated interactions in order to properly analyze the performance of a
code-division multiple-access (CDMA) techniques. Early performance many-user system using SIR-based power control.
analyses of a CDMA approach to wireless mobile and personal
This paper documents such a study. Section 2 presents an outline of
communications have assumed the ability of power control to equalize the
the system model and the simulation approach used in this study to
absolute signal powers of CDMA users received at each base station. This
characterize individual power control processes and their interactions. The
paper studies a more practical, although analytically more complicated,
simulation results, yielding the achieved local-mean SIR statistics of each
uplink power control technique that uses measurements of the received
radio link after power control, are described in Section 3. These results are
signal-to-interferenceratio (SIR) instead. A combination of discrete-event
used to study the maximum achievable performance of a CDMA system
link simulation and analysis of the obtained SIR statistics is used to explore
using SIR-based powa control and to understand the effects on system
the previously little-known behavior of a CDMA system using SIR-based
capacity of various system parameters.
power control and to obtain performance estimates for such a system under
various operating assumptions. The overall results indicate that power
2. POWER CONTROL BASED ON SIR
control based on SIR has the potential for somewhat higher system
performance than power control based on absolute signal strength assumed 2.1 Power Control Model
in the early analyses.
The feedback power control model in this study is similar to that used
in r41. We assume fixed-step adjustment as shown in Fig. 1. The user
1. INTRODUCTION
transmitting signal powerp; (dB) is updated by a fixed step Ap (a) every
Direct-sequence code-division multiple access (CDMA) techniques Tp seconds, where Tp is the power control sampling period, subscript i
have received extensive attention as an alternative digital wireless indicates the i f h sampling interval, and "a (dl3)" denotes the dB value of a
technology option for mobile and personal communications['] ['I. In a quantity U . In the absence of power command errors in the downlink
CDMA system with asynchronous users sharing the same radio bandwidth channel, the transmit power at the next interval is
and using the same radio site (base station) in each coverage area, interuser
uplink interference adds on a power basis and the performance of each ~i+l = Pi -Ap*C(ei-k), (1)
user becomes poorer as the number of simultaneous users increases. where
Power control of each user is essential to minimize each user's interference
to the uplink communication paths of other users.
References [31 and [41 have examined the performance of a CDMA
system with multiple base stations and a large number of power-controlled and
users. The uplink power control models used in these early analyses, ei-k = Pi-k +&-k - 6. (3)
however, relied on accurate measurement of absolute signal strength at
every base station. In reality, this seems to be impractical because it would All the quantities in the above equations are in dB. C(e;) is the hard-
require system-wide calibration of all base-station receivers to eliminate quantized power command transmitted from the base station during the irh
the uncertainty and differences in the characteristics of individual interval. A lag of k sampling intervals in (2) accounts for possible
receivers. Power control based on the ratio of signal power to additional loop delay in a real implementation. The error signal ei (a)is
interference-plus-noise power (SINR) is more realistic and is actually Set
desirable from the radio link performance perspective, since it is SINR that Threshold Power
S idBI Command
determines the received bit error probability. The terms SIR (signal-to-
interferenceratio) and SINR will be used interchangeably in this paper, the C h a n n e 4
Variation
' +,
Base 8, (dB)
former implying the latter in the situation of primary interest where Station xI (dB)
multiple-access interference dominates thermal noise. Power control Return
based on SIR (or SINR) has the capability of responding to any change of
interference seen by the uplink receiver of each user. Transmit
However, a power change by an individual user to maintain its desired Power
D (dB1
uplink SIR will in turn affect the interference seen by all other users and I . L

create some degree of positive feedback between the individual power

control processes. The details of these interactions are complicated by the User
fact that the system includes multiple base stations and the interference at Integrator Step si&
each base station has independent short-term variation that cannot be
ignored[41. This points to a need for complete simulations of these Fig. 1 Feedback power control model.
0-7803-0608-2/92/$3.00 0 1992 IEEE 868

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 the difference between the received SIR pixi (dB) and the set SIR
threshold 6 (dB),where xi includes the effects of the time-varying channel
attenuation and the uplink interference. In the previous study[41,p;xi (dB)
indicated the received signal strength and xi did not include the effect of
interference; this is the only difference between the present model and the
previous. The presence of power command errors will be included in the
simulation assumptions to be described later.
2.2 System Model and Simulation Assumptions
The following outlines the general detail of the system model used in
this study:
1. The system includes a total of 25 base stations; a square-grid
configuration is assumed. The users are randomly located in the
system with a uniform density of Nu users per base station.
2. The radio signal is attenuated byL3](1) path loss proportional to d4,
d being the propagation distance, (2) log-normal shadowing with a
standard deviation of 8 dB, and (3) multipath fading.
3. Each user scans signals from all the base stations and decides to
communicate with the base station with the largest time-averaged
signal power. The system also allows users in the transition region
between two or more base stations to initiate soff handoffs[’] and
transmit their signals to all these base stations to provide base station
diversity. In this mode of operation, each user will increase its
transmit power only when all participating base stations command
an increase, therefore reducing interference to other users compared
to power control to only the single strongest base station. In this
study, we restrict the number of base stations that can participate in
soft handoff to 2 stations. Soft handoff is initiated by each user
when the difference between the time-averaged signal strengths
from the two strongest base stations is within a certain threshold.
This threshold is important in d e t a i n i n g the tradeoff between the
achievable base station diversity improvement and the amount of
additional radio equipment and trunking required at each base
station to provide such soft handoff capability. A threshold of 6 dB
is used as a nominal value in this study. Simulation results[51
indicate that the soft handoff probability at a threshold of 6 dB is
40%.
4. Two-branch antenna diversity is used at each base-station receiver.
Since the total interuser interference on different diversity antennas
can have independent short-term variations, the diversity combiner
must weight the signals on individual branches inversely to their
short-term interference levels to avoid combining loss[61.Based on
the assumption of optimal antenna diversity combining and optimal
combining of resolvable paths (RAKE[71),the received SIR pixi at
each base station is the sum of short-term input SIRs of all the partial
RAKE correlators in all receiving branchesL4].The total order of
diversity M at the receiver is M = LK, = 2 K p , where L is the
number of diversity antennas and K p is the number of resolvable
paths captured by the receiver, assumed to be all equal in average
strength but with independent multipath fading. Uncaptured energy
due to large dispersion of the channel impulse response[’] can have
significant implicationson the system perf~rmance[~].
5. Maximum transmitter power limitation is an important parameter
that determines the dynamic range of power control. In this study,
we examine system performance as a function of a maximum
normalized power parameter A, defined as
(4)
where ,P is the maximum transmitter power of each user, G , and
Gr are the uplink transmit and receive antenna gains, respectively,
PN is the thermal noise power at the base-station receiver, and
ad:, is the path loss at the maximum distance d,, in each
coverage area (ais a constant). Namely, A is the ratio of mean
signal to thermal noise power, for a shadow-fading value of 0 dB, at
the distance dmm
6. The use of voice activityL3Iis not included in this study, although it
869
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can be easily incorporated by varying Nu as a binomial random
process.
The simulation of SIR-based power control in this study includes the
following additional assumptions:
a. Over an observation period KT,, ,each user is assumed to be moving
continuously within a small geographical area such that each radio
link has uniform path loss and shadowing. Motion-induced
multipath fading is described below.
b. As described above, each user decides which base station (or which
pair of base stations in the case of soft handoff) to communicate with
based on time-averaged measurements of downlink signal strength.
This signal strength is determined from path loss and shadowing: the
variation due to multipath fading is assumed to disappear after time
averaging.
c. After the choice of base station@)has been determined for all users,
short-term multipath fading and SIR-based power control are
simulated over the observation period KT,, for each radio link. For
the purpose of power control, the SIR is calculated for all the users
at all base stations. However, the statistics of achieved uplink SIR
are collected only for users communicating with the base station at
the center of the square grid, since the interference statistics for
radio links near the edge of the system area are different from those
at the center base station in general. In the soft handoff mode, the
higher of the short-term SIRs received at the two serving base
stations is regarded as the achieved short-term SIR for that user.
d. We assume independent Rayleigh fading of each resolved pathDlb1.
The maximum Doppler frequency normalized by the power control
sampling rate ~ D T for , each user is a random variable uniformly
distributed between 0.01 and 0.1. This corresponds to a speed range
of 8 to 80 miles per hour, assuming 900 MHZ radio frequencies and
a power control sampling rate UT, on the order of 1MIz.
e. The feedback power control parameters used in the simulations
are[41[*01:step size Ap = O S dB, additional loop delay k = 1, and
10% (random) power command errors. Due to extensive computer
time required,it is necessary in the simulation to minimize the initial
stabilization time for each power control process. Initial power
setting of each process is done in this study as follows: Assuming the
overall channel attenuation of each link to be known, the initial
power is determined as p o (dB) = 6 (dB)- X O (a) for all users
except that (1) there is a maximum limit, not n
P,,, on the initial transmit power, and (2) the
included in xo is estimated roughly from the user density Nu given.
f. Local-mean SIR statistics are obtained as follows: The local-mean
SIR for each user is computed by averaging the achieved short-term
SIR over a period of ( K - A)Tp, i.e., the overall observation period
KT, with an initial stabilization time of A sampling periods being
excluded. Empirical values K = 500 and A = 100 were found to be
appropriate for this study: see more detail in Section 2.3. After
obtaining the local-mean SIR for all the users served by the center
base station, new random user location, log-normal shadowing, and
multipath fading processes are generated and the simulation of
power control of all users over a period KT, is repeated (including
base station selection and initial power setting for all users at the
beginning of each observation period) until about
local-mean SIRs are obtained. This gives a 99%
within fo.1dB for most local-mean SIR results of interest.
2.3 System Stability
The issue of system stability needs careful consideration. With
possible interactions between individual power control processes, it not
obvious whether the system will always reach a steady state (when: all the
signal statistics become stationary) after some specified initial setup time
as implied in the above simulation assumptions. Let us consider the
situation where the users are neither power-limited nor noise-limited.
Suppose the system has been stable until time t = 0, when an incidental
increase of uplink signal power occurs at a particular base station. There is
a question of how the system resumes its overall stability after this
 perturbation. In order to allow heuristic discussions, we will temporarily
simplify our system model by assuming uniform coupling between uplink
interference at all base stations. Namely, we assume here that the total
average signal power I that each base station receives from the users in its
coverage area produces a total average amount of interference power 6I
equally at all N surrounding base stations, where 6 < 1 indicates the
uniform attenuation (coupling) of interference between each pair of base
stations. Thus, at the steady state before time t = 0, the total average
amount of uplink interference at each base station includes the "in-cell"
interference from its own coverage area Ii = I and the interference from
all other coverage areas Io = k N I . If, at time t =0, the "in-cell"
interference at a base station " A increases by Al , the interference at N
other base stations will each increase by CAI. Accordingly, all the users in
each coverage area must increase their signal powers to maintain the same
desired SIRs. This will in turn cause an additional increase of interference
at all base stations, and so on.
In general, the users in a particular coverage area can compensate for
an increase AI of externally-generated interference at the base station by
+
raising their signal power each by a factor of (1 AI/Io). This way, the
total interference will increase from I; + I , + AZ to
ij(1 + g )
+ I, + AI = (1 + B)(zi
-I- I,) (5)
IO IO
and the original uplink SIR of each user will be restored. Note that this
would be impossible if Io = 0 i.e., without interference from other
coverage areas, all the users would have to increase their power
significantly so that the total interference dominates AI. Based on the
simplified system model described above, the compensation in ( 5 ) at base
station " A will result in an additional interference increase of
AI(Ii/Io)=AI/@ at that base station, which will in turn cause additional
interference increase of AI/N to all N other base stations. Similarly, the
users at each of these other base stations will compensate for this
interference increase and create another interference increase of AI/&*
( N / N divided by w). Thus, the total feedback due to the last increase
from all N other base stations to base station "A" will be A I / N (AI/&2
times @), which is 1/N times the original interference increase A I at this
base station. The above feedback process will take place and continue
along with several other processes not described here, such as the
interactions among the N other base stations themselves. By focusing on
each increase and its feedback effect individually, it can be shown
similarly that the feedback effect of each interference increase is always
reduced by N times, where the number of surrounding base stations N is
greater than unity by assumption. Therefore, we can expect the system to
become stable as time progresses.
It can be said in general from the above simplified analysis that the
presence of external interference from other coverage areas actually helps
to stabilize SIR-based power control. In a real system, the interference
coupling between base stations 6 varies for each pair of base stations and
its reciprocity does not necessarily exist. Exact analyses must also include
the effect of short-term multipath fading and must be based on a fixed-step
adjustment algorithm. However, such analyses will quickly become too
complicated to yield any useful insight, and we are constrained to rely on
simulations to confirm whether the system actually becomes stable or not.
For all the tests we performed under the simulation assumptions described
earlier, the system always reached a steady state and remained stable after
an initial startup time, which was always less than A = 100 power control
sampling intervals.
2.4 Short-Term SIR
In terms of the short-term variation of signals after power control, the
simulation results obtained in this study were on the whole similar to those
obtained in the previous studyL4]for power control based on signal strength
measurement. The short-term interference power received at each
diversity antenna of the base-station receiver has a log-normal distribution
with a standard deviation of about 0.9 dB for K, = 1, and 0.6 dB for
K,,= 2. Although these values are slightly higher than those obtained
previously with signal strength measurement, it is clear that power control
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based on SIR can respond to short-term variation of interference. In
addition, the overall interference variation is still small compared to fading
of the desired signal and therefore does not greatly affect the variation of
SIR after power control. As a result, the statistics of the achieved short-
term SIR after power control that we obtained in this study looked very
similar to the statistics of the received signal after power control obtained
in the previous study, which did not consider short-term interference
variation. These short-term SIR statistics depend mostly on the power
control loop parameters and fo T, rather than other system assumptions.
It should be noted, however, that the radio link performance is not
determined solely by the first-order distribution of short-term SIR.
Especially for a system using channel coding and interleaving, the bit error
probability after de-interleaving and decoding depends greatly on higher-
order signal statistics (e.g., auto-correlation). Detailed investigations at the
radio link level of coded error performance with interleaving and power
control can be found in [Io1 [I1] [Iz1. The following study will focus on
overall system performance with respect to the statistics of the achieved
uplink local-mean SIR.
3. SYSTEM PERFORMANCE
3.1 Intermediate Results
We obtained distributions of local-mean SIR relative to the set
threshold 6 as a function of the number of users per coverage area N,,
under various system assumptions. Fig. 2 shows an example of these
distributions on a log-normal plot for 6 (dB) = -1 1.76 dB, K, = 1, A = 0
dB, and a soft-handoff threshold of 6 dB. As in the previous pa=rc4], we
use overbar to denote an average over short-term statistics, so SIR in the
figure indicates the local-mean SIR obtained from the simulation. This
example result shows the following:
1. For Nu I17, a local-mean SIR value equal to or higher than the set
threshold is achieved for approximately 99% of the users. The
local-mean SIR distribution is approximately log-normal, with a
standard deviation around 0.32 dB and a median around 0.5 dB.
2. As Nu exceeds 17, the local-mean SIR at high percentiles degrades
rapidly with increasing N u , indicating that an increasing number of
users will achieve local-mean SIRs lower than the set threshold.
However, the median local-mean SIR remains slightly higher than
the set value.
The above characteristics represent one of the major differences between
power control based on SIR and that based on signal s t r r t h . In the latter
model, we found previously[41that the statistics of SIR normalized by
LIN, ( L is the number of diversity antennas) are fairly insensitive to a
change in N u . Thus, as N,, increases, the local-mean SIR of each user
decreases equally by approximately the same proportion and the entire SIR
distribution translates lower in SIR. This gives rise to the concept of "soft"
capacity, since adding a few more users over the capacity limit will only
cause the local-mean SIRs of all the existing users to decrease slightly, by
the same amount, without any particular user suffering more performance
degradation than another. However, this is not true for a system using
SIR-based power control. Here, we found that the local-mean SIR statistics
stay almost unchanged until N,, exceeds a certain limit. Beyond this limit,
an increasing number of users will suffer significant decrease in the
achieved local-mean SIR, but the local-mean SIRS of those users with the
highest SIRs will be unaffected. Those suffering a decrease are likely to
be users that are already transmitting at nearly full power P,,, for those
users cannot raise their power much further to compensate for an increase
of interference.
In Fig. 2, the nearly log-normal variation of local-mean SIR for
Nu I17 is due to the effect of residual fading fluctuations of short-term
SIR. This can be explained by refemng to the result of the previous
studyL4].Our previous finding was that the average signal level after power
control usually rises above the power control set level because the residual
short-term variation of the signal power in dB has a nearly symmetrical
distribution. The same argument applies here, since we have shown in the
previous section that the short-term SIR statistics obtained in this study are
 99% between the two power control models. The simulation results given in
Fig. 3 show& relation between the achieved local-mean SIR at the 9gth
percentile (SIR%%)and the SIR threshold 6 for various values of Nu.
95% Other assumptions are similar to those for Fig. 2. This result can be
explained as follows. If the threshold 6 is relatively low, 99% of the users
90% will be able to achieve a local-mean SIR equal to 6 (depending on the
system assumptions,these may not be exactly equal in general). However,
if the SIR threshold is set too high, the system must sacrifice SIR of some
of the users inorder to provide the majority of the users with a high SIR.
As a result, SIR99s decreases rapidly after 6 exceeds some IimiLThe
limit to which the SIR threshold can be set without degrading SZR9gs
depends on Nu;the larger Nu,theAwer this limit. Conversely, the
maximum permitted Nu to achieve SIR99% equal to the set threshold 6
depends on 6 itself; the higher the 6, the lower the maximum allowable
Nu.
From the radio link performance perspective, the threshold 6 must be
set relative to the required local-mean SIFd4]. This required SIR is given
10% by:
5% - = (Eb/lO)R -
SIR,
I;uIIR' (6)

I I I I I I I I I l l I
where W I U t h e ratio of the spread-spectrum chip rate to the information
1% bit rate, (EbI1o)R is the required local-mean&/lo to achieve aprescribed
-8 -6 -4 -2 0 2 4
(e.g., bit error ratio for each radio link, and 6 is a constant of the
=/S (dB) order of unity which depends on the cross-correlation property of the
spread-spectrum codes[41. Without loss of generality, our performance
Fig. 2 Distributionsof local-mean SIR relative to the set threshold 6 as a study is based on 99% required system reliability, i.e., the system capacity
function of the number of users per coverage area Nu,assuming is determined by the maximum allowable user density Nu that permits
6 = -11.76 dB,Kp = 1, A = 0 dB,and soft-handoff threshold of
6 dB. (7)
approximately the same as the statistics of the short-term signal level after The results in Figs. 2 and 3 indicate that the achieved S z 9 9 % after power
power control obtained in the previous study. This similar nature causes control is always equal to or lower than the set threshold 6. In fact, this
the rise in local-mean SIR observed in this study to increase with the was found to be true for all the simulation results obtained through9 this
variance of the short-term SIR distribution. Thus, a user with a higher study. Therefore, the system must always set the threshold 6 2 SZRR to
~ D tends T ~to have a greater rise in local-mean SIRIver the set value guarantee adequate radio link performEe for 99% of the users. On the
.
than does a user with a lower fo Tp The resulting SIR 16 (dB)therefore other hand, if 6 is set too high above SIRR,according to the result in Fig.
varies over a range from about 0 dB to 1.5 dB as shown in Fig. 2. 3, the maximum allowable Nu will be lower than its highest potential
In the case of power control based on signal strength, if every user in a value.
given system has the same desired signal level, the local-mean SIR In general, the relation between S z , and the optimum threshold to
statistics of each user will be determined only by the user density Nu. achieve the maximum potential system capacity may vary with system
With SIR-based power control, however, the achieved local-mean SIR of assumptions. A straightforward simulation approach to determine
each user also depends greatly on the absolute value of the set threshold 6, o p t i i m system performance would be t o a r y 6 around the given value
as shown in Fig. 3. This is another major difference in system behavior of SIRR and obtain simulation results of SIR 99% for various values of Nu,
I similar to the results in Fig. 3, under each given set of system assumntions.
However, such an approach appears to be useful only when SIRR is
-1 1 specified, since direct simulation results such as Figs. 2 and 3 do not
provide much insight a s t o how the system capacity can be scaled with
-12 respect to a change in SIRR .
3.2 Optimized System Performance
-13
The alternative simulation approach that we use to determine optimum
-14 system performance involves the use of the following simple analytical
expression of the normalized system capacity:
-15

-16
where
-17
-
I-
-18
-16 -15 -14 -13 -12 -11 -10 -9 -8 ( E ? ) R l L is the required E X at each of L diversity antennas,
6 (dB1 assuming optimal combining. The above equations are derived directly
from (6) and (7)with appropriate normalizations[41.The quantity Q,which
Fig. 3 Achieved 9gth-percenti1e local-mean SIR (SEW%) versus the can be determined from simulation, indicates the capacity reduction
threshold 6 for various values of Nu,assuming K p = 1, A = 0 relative to an ideal CDMA system with a single coverage area and equal-
dB. and soft-handoff threshold of 6 dB. power users: this is true because, for the ideal CDMA system, the
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 maximum number of allowable users Nu,where Nu >> 1, is given byL3] , ,6 the relative system performance q is reduced by approximately
above
1 dB also. Thus, the general value of q can be approximated for 6 2 6,
Nu = W/Rt. (10) as
(Eb1IO)RlL
Thus, our system-level study will focus on characterizing the relative Q qrnax%. (11)
performance 17 instead.
Note that 77 is in fact the product of two quantities, SE99%16 and Nu6,
divided by a constant 15 (L = 2 in this study). In Fig. 4, we plot the
relation between these two quantities using the same set of simulation
stl'r as used in Figs. 2 and 3. Fig. 4 shows that the relation between
-I t h
1
SIR99yJ6 and Nu6 is essentially insensitive to the value of 6 assumed.
This appears to be true also for results based on other system assumptions
(e.g., different values of Kp and A). Accordingly, thselative system
performance q can be determined as a function only of SIR99%/6. This is
an important finding, since it allows us to use simulation results obtained
for a particular 6 to characterize the more general system performance.
All the remaining performance results in this paper therefore are obtained
using 6 = -1 1.76 dB.

" - 1
+a -7 -6 -5
-
-4 -3 -2 -1 0 1

SIRggyJ6 (dB)

Fig. 5 System performance versus S z w y J 6 for various values of A,

173 -3 t o 6 = -9.76dB
+ :6=-10.26dB
o : 6 = -10.76 dB
assuming K p = 1 and soft-handoff threshold of 6 dB.
On the other hand, 99% system reliability may never be achieved if the
threshold is set lower than,6 because the optimum value of SIR99yJ6 is

p
X :6=-11.26dB
:6=-11.76dB
usually (especially for A 2 0 equal or only slightly lower than its
maximum achievable value ( S I R W ~ J ~ ) , Therefore,
~. we obtain the

,
:6;-12.:dBl
0 : 6 = -12.76 dB
-6
I I ~ I
-6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3
(dB)
- SIR,
Fig. 4 SIRwyJ6 versus Nu 6, assuming Kp = 1, A = 0 dB, and soft-
handoff threshold of 6 dB.
Fig. 5 show the simulation results of q versus Sx997J6 for various
values of the maximum transmitted power parameter A (defined in (4)),
assuming Kp = 1 and a soft-handoff threshold of 6 dB. The maximum
value of 11 for each curve (qmax)indicates the optimum system
performance for different values of A. For A 2 0 dB, qmaxof -2.5 dB to
-2 dB can be achieved. This should be compared with the system
performance for power control based on signal strength, where typical
values of based on similar system assumptions were found to be on the
order of -4dB to -3 dB[']. Higher system performance is obtained here
because power control based on SIR helps to reduce the effect of
interference fluctuation on the local-mean SIR statistics. In fact, due to the
effect of interference fluctuation, the standard deviations of the log-normal
local-mean SIR distributions for power control based on signal strength in
the previous study were about twice that of the result in Fig. 2 for
Nu 5 17.
It should be noted in Fig. 5 that SZ997J6 is always less than 0 dB and
the optimum value corresponding to Qmax may vary for a different A.
Given the system requirement of (7), we can determine the value of 6 to
achieve optimum performance u s i n m e results in this figure. Namely, the
o a m u m threshold,,6 is equal to SIRR divided by the optimum value of
SIR99yJ6 determined from Fig. 5. The threshold can be set higher than
, 6 at the expense of reduced system performance. According to Fig. 5,
for each 1 dB decrease of the operating value of sIR99yJ6 below its
optimum value, or in other words, for each 1 dB increase of the set 6
872
following empirical lower limits on the value of threshold 6 that can be set:
-
6 2 6, b SIRR. (12)
T c h e extent that the optimum value of SE99yJ6 can be approximated by
(SIR~~YJ~),,,we obtain
-
,6 = (13)
(=997J~)max .
Using (6). (II), and (13), the normalized system capacity in (8) can be
rewritten as follows:
where
and
(Eb/to)s is a required EblIO quantity associated with the value of
threshold 6 actually set.
Fig. 6 shows the simulation results of qmaxversus A for K p = 1 and
K p = 2. The results without soft handoff are also shown for comparison;
these results assume that each user chooses the single base station with the
largest local-mean signal power. The potential system capacity degrades
rapidly for A less than 0 dB. Therefore, careful consideration of the
maximum transmitter power and the area of coverage is necessary. For A
greater than 0 dB, all the results show only a slight increase of qmaxwith
increasing A. Thus, in order to maximize the system coverage for a fixed
P,,,, a value of A = 0 dB seems appropriate. Without soft handoff, the
performance for A 2 0 dB improves by about 0.5 dB when the number of
resolvable paths increases from Kp = 1 to Kp = 2. Such improvement,

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 however, becomes negligible with the use of soft handoff. These results
are generally consistent with the results of the previous studyL4]and can be
explained as follows. When power control hacks short-term multipath
fading well. the average amount of "out-of-cell" uplink interference from
users in other coverage areas tends to increase compared to the case where
power control tracks only the local-mean channel variation. This relative
increase depends on the order of diversity: the higher the order of
diversity, the smaller the increase. Thus, the system performs better for
K,, = 2 than for Kp = 1, but the improvement becomes small with the use
of soft handoff due to diminishing returns of diversity.
I I I
An upper-bound value of using SIR-based power control as obtained
from the system model in this study is around -2 dB, indicating a
maximum achievable system capacity for the uplink of about 60% relative
to an ideal "single-cell" system. In general, the value of T l varies with the
assumptions of the maximum power parameter (A), the soft handoff
decision criterion, the details of the radio channel characteristics, and the
amount of signal power captured by each receiver relative to the total
arriving time-dispersed signal power. The relative decrease in the average
captured time-dispersed signal power corresponds directly to the relative
reduction in system capacityL5].In addition, we emphasize that the system
model used in this study has already included a number of idealized
assumptions, such as: (1) undelayed base station selection and soft

4
-2 -
handoff, (2) perfect power control initial setting, and (3) no
implementation loss. Further work will be required to study the sensitivity
to transient system behavior and implementation-related factors not
modeled in the present study.

-3 - ACKNOWLEDGMENT
thout soft handoff I wish to thank Dr. H. W. Arnold for insightful observations and advice
-4 - during the development of this work.

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873

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