Power control, broadly speaking, is the intelligent selection of
transmitter power output
In radio transmission, transmitter power output (TPO) is the actual amount of power (in watts) of radio frequency (RF) energy that a transmitter produces at its output.
TPO is a concept related to effective radiated power (ERP), but refers t ...
in a
communication system
A communications system is a collection of individual telecommunications networks systems, relay stations, tributary stations, and terminal equipment usually capable of interconnection and interoperation to form an integrated whole. Communic ...
to achieve good performance within the system.
[ Guowang Miao, Jens Zander, Ki Won Sung, and Ben Slimane, Fundamentals of Mobile Data Networks, Cambridge University Press, , 2016.] The notion of "good performance" can depend on context and may include optimizing metrics such as
link data rate, network capacity, outage probability, geographic
coverage and range, and life of the network and network devices. Power control algorithms are used in many contexts, including
cellular networks,
sensor networks,
wireless LAN
A wireless LAN (WLAN) is a wireless computer network that links two or more devices using wireless communication to form a local area network (LAN) within a limited area such as a home, school, computer laboratory, campus, or office building ...
s, and
DSL
Digital subscriber line (DSL; originally digital subscriber loop) is a family of technologies that are used to transmit digital data over telephone lines. In telecommunications marketing, the term DSL is widely understood to mean asymmetric di ...
modems.
Transmit power control
Transmit power control is a technical mechanism used within some networking devices in order to prevent too much unwanted interference between different
wireless networks (e.g. the owner's network and the neighbour's network). It is also essential component in case of cognitive radio networks deployed in a distributed fashion, aka distributed power control.
The network devices supporting this feature include
IEEE 802.11h Wireless LAN
A wireless LAN (WLAN) is a wireless computer network that links two or more devices using wireless communication to form a local area network (LAN) within a limited area such as a home, school, computer laboratory, campus, or office building ...
devices in the 5 GHz band compliant to the
IEEE 802.11a. The idea of the mechanism is to automatically reduce the used transmission output power when other networks are within range. Reduced power means reduced interference problems and increased battery life. The power level of a single device can be reduced by 6 dB, which should result in an accumulated power level reduction (the sum of radiated power of all devices currently transmitting) of at least 3 dB (half of the power).
UMTS
Because of the interference in the WCDMA system, power control plays a very important role in the quality control for the different services in the UMTS system. Power control is executed 1500 times per second, whereas in the GSM system it is ~2 times per second.
See also
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Cellular network
A cellular network or mobile network is a telecommunications network where the link to and from end nodes is wireless network, wireless and the network is distributed over land areas called ''cells'', each served by at least one fixed-locatio ...
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Cellular traffic
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IEEE 802.11h
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Radio resource management Radio resource management (RRM) is the system level management of co-channel interference, radio resources, and other radio transmission characteristics in wireless communication systems, for example cellular networks, wireless local area networks, ...
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Spectral efficiency
Spectral efficiency, spectrum efficiency or bandwidth efficiency refers to the information rate that can be transmitted over a given bandwidth in a specific communication system. It is a measure of how efficiently a limited frequency spectrum i ...
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Wireless LAN
A wireless LAN (WLAN) is a wireless computer network that links two or more devices using wireless communication to form a local area network (LAN) within a limited area such as a home, school, computer laboratory, campus, or office building ...
References
Radio resource management
IEEE 802.11
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