Power controlled multiple access (PCMA) in wireless communication networks

Abstract

We address the issue of power-controlled shared channel access in future wireless networks supporting pack- etized data traffic, beyond the voice-oriented continuous trafRc primarily supported by current generation networks. First, some novel formulations of the power control prob- lem are introduced, which become progressively more gen- eral by incorporating various relevant costs. The analysis of the models under simple, yet natural, assumptions yields certain ubiquitous structural properties of 'optimal' power control algorithms. Based on such structural properties, we design a new family of distributed and asynchronous PCMA algorithms and evaluate them experimentally by simulation. They are found to perform substantially better than a stan- dard benchmark algorithm for power control. This is a first step towards the design of full PCMA protocols for au- tonomous channel access in high-performance wireless net- works.