Reverse Link Power Control for Managing Inter-Cell Interference in Orthogonal Multiple Access Systems

Several next generation mobile wireless technologies have adopted orthogonal multiple access techniques in the reverse link. An orthogonal reverse link implies that same cell (or intra-cell) interference is no longer the dominating factor limiting system performance, rather it is the interference from mobile transmissions in neighboring cells (inter-cell interference) which ultimately limits the performance of the system, especially with a reuse factor of 1. In this work we propose a simple reverse link power control scheme which is effective in managing the interference generated to neighboring cells. Parameterization of the power control scheme allows flexible tradeoff between overall spectral efficiency and cell-edge bit rates. In addition, we show that the variance of the inter-cell interference distribution is reduced compared to existing power control methods, which leads to significantly improved system performance.